Previews began March 19 at the James Earl Jones Theatre. Opening night is April 15. The play is called The Fear of 13, it is based on a true story of wrongful conviction and 22 years on death row, and it stars two of the most decorated film actors of their generation in their first appearances on the Broadway stage. The wait for both of them is finally over.
There is a particular kind of anticipation that builds when two film stars of genuine stature announce Broadway debuts simultaneously — not for a revival or a proven vehicle, but for a new play, adapted from a documentary, about a man who asked a court to execute him rather than spend one more day in a cell for a crime he did not commit. That is the anticipation currently surrounding The Fear of 13 at the James Earl Jones Theatre in Midtown Manhattan, where previews opened March 19 and official opening night is set for April 15.
Two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody and recent Golden Globe nominee Tessa Thompson are set to make their Broadway debuts in Lindsey Ferrentino’s The Fear of 13, coming to Broadway after premiering at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2024. Performances begin March 19 at the James Earl Jones Theatre, officially opening April 15.
For Brody, the debut is the completion of a journey that began in London 18 months ago. For Thompson, it is her first time on any Broadway stage. For audiences, it is one of the most compelling double-debut situations the city has seen in years.
The True Story at the Center
Every element of The Fear of 13 — its emotional weight, its theatrical power, its partnership with the Innocence Project — flows from the real life of one man: Nick Yarris.
Nick Yarris is an American writer who spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania. He was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder in 1982 and was exonerated by DNA testing in 2003. After landing in jail for driving under the influence, Yarris saw a news article about the rape and murder of a local woman, Linda Mae Craig. He claimed to know the killer to win favor with the authorities and possibly avoid the DUI charge, but when it turned out the suspect wasn’t involved, Yarris became the suspect himself. He was charged with abduction, rape, and murder and was found guilty.
He was 21 years old when he entered the Pennsylvania death row system. He would spend the next two decades there — mostly in isolation — becoming, in the process, a self-taught reader, writer, and thinker. Yarris taught himself new words in prison, including triskaidekaphobia: the fear of the number 13. That word became the title of his memoir, later reissued from its original title Seven Days to Live, and then the title of a 2015 British documentary directed by David Sington in which Yarris tells his own story in the style of a one-person show, jumping through time with the ease and vividness of a born storyteller.
Yarris became the 140th person in the United States to be exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing when the court vacated his conviction in September 2003. He was the 13th death row prisoner to be freed through DNA evidence. He was released in 2004.
The play does not simply recount those facts. It inhabits them from the inside.
From Documentary to Stage: Lindsey Ferrentino’s Adaptation
Ferrentino discovered The Fear of 13 documentary during Covid. “It was just Nick on a stool, telling his story,” the playwright has said in interviews. “It felt to me like theatre, a one-man show.”
What she saw in the documentary — and in the man himself — was not just a wrongful conviction story but something rarer: a story about how human beings survive extraordinary circumstances through the power of narrative, humor, and connection. Ferrentino reached out to Yarris and, over years of conversations, developed both the play and a personal friendship with its subject.
Ferrentino developed a friendship and mutual trust with Yarris, which was invaluable in the shaping and development of the play. He is officially credited as a story consultant for the Broadway production. “I spent a lot of time with Nick,” she said. “I hear from him now on a daily basis, and have for the last, I’d say, two to three years.”
What emerged from that collaboration is a drama structured around prison visits between Yarris and a volunteer named Jacki — a relationship that deepens from strangers to something far more consequential. Through a series of prison visits with a volunteer named Jacki, Nick traces a life shaped by impulse and consequence. As Nick and Jacki’s conversations deepen, the line between witness and participant blurs, forcing both to confront what justice demands, what belief requires, and the perilous distance between true freedom and the illusion of self-determination. By turns devastating, darkly funny, and life-affirming, The Fear of 13 is a powerful exploration of truth and trust, conscience and connection.
The play reshaped Sington’s solo documentary format into an ensemble stage drama — still centered on Yarris’s first-person voice, but now in active dialogue with another human being who refuses to simply be a witness.
Adrien Brody: Two Oscars, One Broadway Debut
Brody is, by any measure, one of the most accomplished screen actors of his generation. Adrien Brody became the youngest winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in 2003 for The Pianist, and won the award a second time in 2025 for The Brutalist.
What he had never done, despite decades of film work spanning Roman Polanski’s wartime drama to Wes Anderson’s ensemble comedies to a second Oscar nearly 22 years after the first, was appear on a Broadway stage. The wait ended when The Fear of 13 premiered at London’s Donmar Warehouse in October 2024.
When his casting was announced, Brody called The Fear of 13 “a story steeped in truth, that exposes systematic injustice and apathy through hope and humanity.” He told the Guardian: “I love the theatre and although I have not been on the stage in many years I have been searching for the right material and this was so clearly the one.”
The London run earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor — the British theater world’s equivalent of a Tony — alongside a nomination for the play itself for Best New Play. The Independent gave the production a three-star review and wrote that Brody gives “a powerful performance that doesn’t let this wronged man feel like a straightforward victim.”
“He’s a remarkable storyteller,” Brody said of Yarris. “So much of what this play speaks to is the ability to transport oneself out of harrowing conditions and circumstances through story.”
Tessa Thompson: A New Stage Chapter
While Brody reprises his London performance for Broadway, Tessa Thompson is entirely new to the role of Jacki and to Broadway itself. Thompson recently spoke about how starring in the cinematic reimagining of Hedda Gabler inspired her to return to the stage. Her screen career spans the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Valkyrie in the Thor films, all three Creed films as Bianca Creed, and acclaimed independent work in Passing and Sorry to Bother You. Most recently she received a Golden Globe nomination for Hedda and appears in the Netflix series His & Hers.
Playing Jacki opposite Brody’s Yarris, Thompson brings a character who evolves from visitor to confessor to something more — the play traces Yarris and Schaffer’s relationship as they blossomed from strangers to spouses during Yarris’s imprisonment, and how they worked to win his freedom. The role demands a kind of sustained witnessing that is its own form of dramatic virtuosity: being the human anchor against which an extraordinary life story breaks and reshapes itself.
A New Director, a New Vision for Broadway
The Broadway production is not a direct transfer of the London staging. Broadway is getting a new staging, this time led by Tony-winning director David Cromer. Cromer, whose Tony win came for The Band’s Visit, brings a sensibility rooted in American theater and an intimate relationship with ensemble work.
Playwright Ferrentino noted: “It’s a new director, it’s all new designers, it’s a completely American team who all have their own relationship with the carceral system in a way that perhaps the London production, as beautiful as it was, didn’t have that personal relationship with the American prison system. There’s been more of a focus in the rewrites on the world of the prison and making sure that it’s completely accurate to Nick’s experience.”
That shift matters. The American criminal justice system — its prisons, its death rows, its history of wrongful convictions concentrated disproportionately among people of color, its slow and contested embrace of DNA evidence as a corrective — is not an abstract context for this story. It is the world in which Nick Yarris spent 22 years.
Cromer described Yarris as “wildly generous with us and supportive. He comes at us with all the information he can share and a great deal of faith.” He added that Yarris provides a reminder that a person’s life can turn on a dime — and turn very dark, very fast — just because “one thing happens.” In Yarris’s case, a traffic stop set off the chain of events leading to his wrongful conviction. “It’s terrifying,” the director said, “to meet someone whose experience is so much more extreme than yours.”
Brody is joined by Tony nominee Ephraim Sykes as Man 4; Michael Cavinder, making his Broadway debut as Man 5; Eddie Cooper as Man 6; Victor Cruz, making his Broadway debut as Man 3; Joel Marsh Garland as Guard; Jeb Kreager as Man 2; and additional ensemble members.
The Innocence Project Partnership
From its announcement in January 2026, the production has forged a formal partnership with the Innocence Project — the nonprofit organization that uses DNA evidence and other scientific tools to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the systems that produce wrongful convictions.
The Fear of 13 is proud to announce a groundbreaking partnership with the Innocence Project, whose mission is to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Its work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism.
Christina Swarns, who now serves as the Innocence Project’s executive director, was one of Yarris’s real-life attorneys. The partnership means audiences leaving The Fear of 13 will encounter direct pathways to engagement — financial support, advocacy, awareness — around an organization whose work makes Nick Yarris’s freedom possible and continues to fight for others still in cells for crimes they did not commit.
The James Earl Jones Theatre
The Fear of 13 plays at the James Earl Jones Theatre, located at 138 W. 48th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Formerly called the Cort Theatre, the venue opened in 1912. In 2022, following renovations, the theatre was named for the late Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award winner James Earl Jones.
The theater’s own history — the Cort opened in 1912, served as the home of some of Broadway’s most significant productions over the following century, and was renamed in honor of one of American theater and film’s towering Black artists — adds resonance to a play about justice, freedom, and what it means to have one’s story finally, fully told.
What the Season Means — and What to Expect
The Fear of 13 runs for a 16-week limited engagement, with official opening night April 15. The preview period — the current phase of performances underway since March 19 — is the window in which the creative team continues to shape the production before critics review it and the run officially begins. Tony Award eligibility for the 2025-2026 season means both Brody and Thompson are likely candidates for nomination consideration once the production opens.
Yes — the play earned five-star reviews and won Adrien Brody an Olivier Award in London. Broadway audiences now have the opportunity to see that performance in a newly reconceived American staging, alongside one of the most exciting actors of Thompson’s generation in a role built entirely for her.
Nick Yarris, the man at the center of it all, served as story consultant on the Broadway production. He is alive, free, and reportedly in close contact with the creative team. “He has a different perspective on the way time moves,” Ferrentino said. “He has a different perspective on aggression in the world, on interpersonal dynamics.”
Twenty-two years on death row has a way of clarifying what matters. The play built from that experience is, by all accounts, equally clear-eyed.
