Not that long ago, two-time Oscar-winner Adrien Brody decided it was time to make a Broadway debut. He chose The Fear of 13, and now he’s here doing himself proud. That’s after playing it in London and landing an Olivier Award nomination.
The play is Lindsey Ferrentino’s adaptation of David Sington’s 2015 documentary of the same name, the true story of Nick Yarris, who spent 22 years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn’t commit: the murder of Linda Mae Craig.
Affecting a slightly bent and not entirely confident gait, Brody—who bears no resemblance to the bald Yarris of the documentary—can’t be faulted in the least for his portrayal. He’s entirely the man who resolutely maintains his innocence in Huntingdon State Prison, Pennsylvania. He fights for so long that he reaches the disillusioned point where he even requests the governor to schedule his execution. He’s granted a date and almost succumbs.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Before that, however, so much heart-break befalls him. Indeed, Ferrentino—who earlier this season wrote the unimpressive book for The Queen of Versailles—does a fine job of transferring the documentary to the stage, though hardly shot for shot or recalled incident for incident. Importantly, neither does she misrepresent anything Yarris himself recalls.
At first, The Fear of 13 gives the impression that it’s going to be a treatise on cruel prison practices. Huntingdon State, as shown here, allows no speaking. Anyone caught speaking opens himself to beatings, attacks Yarris quickly endures as do other inmates.
Although the introductory sequences linger over this vicious practice, it isn’t long before the grim play becomes a love story; a love story, that is, seemingly requited at first but eventually and sadly unrequited.
A volunteer, Jacki Miles (Tessa Thompson), begins visiting Nick. Initially, they bond over J.D. Salinger’s widely adored classic, The Catcher in the Rye. But that’s only the first of the many books Jacki brings, causing Nick aggressively to educate and over time transform himself.
Not only does that flower. Love does as well and to such an extent that, despite being forbidden to touch each other, Nick and Jacki marry, touching only once in Ferrentino’s convincing version.
Knowing why Nick is on Death Row, Jacki has no problem believing his innocence and with him begins working to prove it. Proof, as it turns out, depends on demonstrating that Nick’s DNA, which was no significant issue during a trial featuring little concrete evidence, will exonerate him.
Establishing DNA, however, is no easy task. It takes years, delays eating away not only at the process but involving frustrating accidents. The spirit-crushing worst is a wrapped package containing the clothes Nick was wearing at the supposed murder breaking apart in the mail and the contents declared contaminated. The outcome leads to the end of the Nick-Jacki marriage, with Nick again being on his own.
It’s no spoiler to say there is a happy ending. How else could Nick have told his disturbing tale? How else could Sington have made the documentary and Ferrentino dramatize it? More to the point, Nick Yarris is credited as Story Consultant in the Playbill. (Incidentally, there’s no description in Sington’s work or Ferrentino’s that the film has instigated any prison changes at Huntingdon State—or anywhere else, for that matter.)
Always impeccable David Cromer directs the production, a dark one lighted by Heather Gilbert on Arnulfo Maldonado’s high but sometimes seemingly crushing set. The acting by the 12-member cast—most of those supporting coming and going as more than one character—is strong, lending that much more weight to the ominous proceedings.
Special attention must be paid to Thompson, with wigmakers Rob Pickens and Katie Gell enhancing Jacki’s aging over close to two decades. With delicate firmness she creates a woman slowly worn down by the increasingly cruel circumstances.
At the end, however, The Fear of 13 is Brody’s domain. Never offstage and often really as well as symbolically solitary, he presents a man fighting for his life until fight is drained from him. And then what seems miraculously restored to him. It’s restored, and yet at the last moments, he’s left wondering what’s left for him, what kind of future he faces. Right up to those final moments, Brody instills frayed dignity.
Incidentally, the title The Fear of 13 is somewhat obscure. The key to it appears to be couched in a late in the drama reminiscence from Nick that requires close listening. Go for it.
The Fear of 13 opened April 13, 2026, at the James Earl Jones Theatre and runs through July 12. Tickets and information: thefearof13broadway.com
