Justice on a hot summer day

Little Victory Players present '12 Angry Men'

WHEN: Friday, August 31 and Saturday, September 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, September 2 at 2:00 p.m.

WHERE: The Old Capitol Theater, 170 East Front Street, Hancock, NY.

COST: $10.

CONTACT: 607/363-2819.

HANCOCK, NY — Hancock’s Little Victory Players is concluding their summer season this year with a production of Reginald Rose’s “12 Angry Men.” The run started on August 24, but there’s still time to catch it this weekend.

Made famous by an award-winning 1957 movie starring an ensemble of luminaries including Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb and E.G. Marshall, the play focuses on a few intense hours in a jury room with a panel charged with deliberating on a case that, at first, seems open and shut. Anxious to reach a rapid conclusion on a steamy summer day, the jury is goaded instead into a reflection on the facts, the law—and ultimately, on their own principles, emotions and lives—by one juror who insists on taking seriously the idea that the mission of the law is to vindicate the innocent as well as to condemn the guilty.

The troupe was founded in 1993 by Manhattan expatriates Sherry Pagan and Ernie Schenk, both of whom have TV and stage experience. Originally, they played in a one-room schoolhouse in the hamlet of Harvard, but about three years ago were given the use of the Old Capitol Theater in Hancock. The 1909 theater had originally been an opera house, and though it lost many of its theatrical accoutrements in a subsequent incarnation as a hardware store, it retained such essentials as a stage. The venue allows the troupe to put on performances during the winter as well as the summer, and this year they are hoping to stage a production of “Pollyanna” for Christmas and possibly revive their production of “The Monkey’s Paw” for Halloween. The company also goes on tour around the region from time to time.

The cast for “12 Angry Men” is headlined by Andy Puritz, Schenk and Rick Mertens. They are part of a regular company of about 50 players, some of them from as far away as Oneonta and Binghamton, who come to Hancock for the Little Victory Players’ performances.

The company’s flyer says, “This non-profit organization fosters the belief that theatre must serve as an advocate and caretaker of the common threads which bind the American culture together in a world defined more and more in diversity.” The Little Victory Players are another delightful local resource in our culturally rich community, and a visit to their stage should make a worthy ending for the summer.