Vertigo Theatre is closing its 2025/26 season with The Verdict, the North American premiere of Margaret May Hobbs’s stage adaptation of Barry Reed’s novel. Some will know the story from the 1982 Sidney Lumet film with Paul Newman. This is its own thing and it stands on its own.
Frank Galvin is a Boston lawyer in bad shape. Years of taking whatever cases come his way, drinking through the gaps. He’s handed a malpractice suit involving a young woman left in a coma after two doctors gave her the wrong anesthetic. The hospital, which is church-run, has put a settlement on the table. Galvin turns it down and takes it to court. That’s the decision everything else hinges on.
Shaun Smyth plays Galvin and doesn’t flatter him. He shows up to things having already been drinking, he’s dismissive, he’s difficult to be around. Early on there’s a scene where he visits the woman in hospital and sees what’s actually happened to her. You watch his face change. He doesn’t say much. After that I stopped wondering whether I liked Galvin. The people on the other side of this case are organised, well-funded and backed by the Church. They have every reason to believe this ends quietly. Smyth makes sure you feel how much is at stake if they’re right.
The scenes with Dov Mickelson were honestly my favourite part of the show. Mickelson plays Moe Katz, Galvin’s old mentor and an old lawyer who has long made his peace with how the system works. He stopped pushing back years ago. Galvin hasn’t. That gap between them runs through every scene they share and I appreciated that neither actor makes a big deal of it. There’s warmth there, and real laughs, which makes the harder moments hit when they arrive.
Kelsey Verzotti plays Donna St. Laurent, a character introduced specifically in Hobbs’s stage adaptation who doesn’t exist in the 1982 film, and Natalie Stampanatto. Both roles are pivotal to the case. I kept finding my attention going back to her even when the scene wasn’t hers. There’s a stretch in the first act where she’s behind the bar and she’s still the person you keep looking at. She’s one of those actors who is hard to look away from.
Joel Cochrane plays Concannon, the high-powered defence lawyer brought in by the Church to bury the case. He’s the kind of lawyer who has never had to fight for anything because money and power have always done it for him. Cochrane plays him with a cool, settled arrogance that makes him genuinely easy to dislike. Every time he’s on stage you’re reminded exactly what Galvin is up against.
Narda McCarroll‘s set is probably my favourite Vertigo has put up this season. The first act moves through a law office, a bar and a hospital corridor, and each feels specific. You never actually see the woman. No hospital bed, no equipment on stage. Instead a harsh light comes up on Galvin and you hear a heart monitor steady in the background. It’s a simple choice and it’s devastating. Those scenes carry the weight of the whole trial. The lighting by Tiffany Lynn Cuffley makes it land. Both she and McCarroll do what good design should do, support the story without you noticing they’re there.
The story is about power and accountability and what it costs someone to take on an institution that expects to win. In 2026 that doesn’t need much explaining.
I’ve seen a lot of theatre this season and this is the one I’ve thought about most since leaving. The Verdict runs until June 7. Grab tickets at vertigotheatre.com or at the box office before it closes.
