Theatre; Twelve Angry Men Comedy Theatre, London

From the America of the OJ Simpson verdict and of juries reportedly too frightened to convict blacks for fear of riots, we leap back with Twelve Angry Men - Reginald Rose's jury-room classic - to a Fifties world where to be black was, ipso facto, to be guilty. The one injustice does not excuse the other, but it offers some historical explanation for it. Moreover, as the programme to Harold Pinter's splendidly acted revival points out, 1995 saw the largest number of executions in the US since 1957 and changes in the law there suggest that the rate of increase will be stepped up. Twelve Angry Men is an eloquent demonstration of the dangers of sentencing any man to death.

It can't be denied that the play, originally written for TV and then made into a gripping film starring Henry Fonda, looks a bit contrived now and, in striving to break through the prejudices of a morally unsubtle Fifties audience, it has to resort to some pretty unsubtle methods itself. The action is set in a New York jury room on a stiflingly hot day. The all-male, all-white personnel are closeted there to reach a verdict on what looks like an open-and-shut case. A 16-year-old slum kid has been accused of stabbing his father to death. The evidence against him looks damning. He was overheard by the man in the apartment beneath and witnessed in the act by a woman living in the opposite block. Only one juror, a liberal architect, whose quiet decency is well conveyed by Kevin Whateley, holds out against a "guilty" verdict.

Inspirationally, this figure is shown gradually swinging the others round through a scrupulous sifting of the evidence. One problem with the play is that the prosecution case proves to be so riddled with holes that only a defence lawyer of spectacular dimness, could have failed to demolish it. Where the piece still has bite is in its depiction of the bigotries that people bring with them into the jury room and their consequent reluctance to respond to reason.

For me, the most frightening of the bunch is not Peter Vaughan's poisonous racist ("I say get him before he gets us"), nor the excellent Tony Haygarth's blustering redneck whose view of the case is warped by the pain of problems with his own son. No, the most frightening is Maurice Kaufmann's gum- chewing elderly baseball fan, who wants a quick verdict so that he can get to his game and eventually sides with right for purely selfish, pragmatic reasons, not because he's convinced. In the other two, the moral sense is there, albeit perverted; in him, chillingly, it doesn't exist.

The play presupposes that hidden vested interests are the monopoly of the illiberal, which is not the case. It also makes the accused too much a model of abused victimhood. But it has theatrical life and moral authority, to both of which features Pinter's production does justice.

To 27 July. Booking: 0171-369 1731