YORK, you stand on trial. To miss this courthouse drama would, frankly, be a criminal act.

The Grand Opera House is having a golden year for touring dramas, first the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, then East Yorkshire satirist Richard Bean’s farce One Man, Two Guvnors, and now impresario Bill Kenwright’s tour of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men.

Already, Christopher Haydon’s production has enjoyed a record-breaking run at London’s Garrick Theatre, after its 2013 premiere at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and now it is on its nationwide tour with Tom Conti among those reprising his West End role.

Conti, as silken-voiced as ever at 73, is playing Juror 8, the role made famous by Henry Fonda in the 1957 film, but you should cast aside memories of Sidney Lumet’s movie to enjoy Twelve Angry Men anew on stage.

As the sonorous voice of the unseen judge warns the jury, “one man is dead; the life of another is at stake”. In the New York heat, as a hovering storm waits to crack and an overhead fan declines to work, 12 jurors are gathered behind a locked door to decide the fate of a young delinquent, a boy of 16 accused of stabbing his father to death.

It looks an open-and-shut case, as the jury foreman (Andrew Frame) takes the opening vote of 11 to one, but a unanimous verdict is required to condemn the boy to the mandatory death penalty. Standing alone, unsure of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, is Conti’s Juror 8, an architect by profession who sets about building the case the defence lawyer never satisfactorily presented.

Eloquent and equitable, Juror 8 is the calm amid the storm. The twelve angry men of the title is a misnomer because Conti’s conciliatory juror does not raise his voice or burst the banks of frustration as those around him do.

Haydon’s ensemble cast is uniformly impressive and individually on fire, topped by Conti’s assiduous turn, sharp of wit, quick of mind, deeply humanitarian, without ever being righteous. Robert Duncan’s quiet money-man Juror 4 comes slowly to the fore, while Andrew Lancel’s irascible Juror 3 and Denis Lill's boorish, bigoted Juror 10 both sustain being at boiling point pretty much throughout.

Rising tempers match rising tension but Haydon’s company also extract all the smart humour in Rose’s script, in particular in the gum-chewing cocksure strut of Sean Power's impatient marmalade salesman, Juror 7.

One more “character” has a significant role: at the centre of Michael Pavelka’s suitably dingy design is a revolving stage that keeps the jurors’ table moving, as if by sleight of hand because you never see its motion. As the table turns, so too do the tables turn in the jury room in a psychological drama where the set so brilliantly mirrors the story.

Twelve Angry Men, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, today and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york