Shadowy, dark and brutally haunting, the Alley Theatre's mesmerizing production of The Exonerated was everything live theater should be. Deeply political and heartbreakingly moving, the stories told in Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's script -- about a group of wrongly accused death-row inmates -- were mesmerizing. But without the fine Alley cast directed by Rob Bundy with gorgeous and lyrical rage, these stories, about the terrible injustices hidden in the dark corners of our legal system, wouldn't have been nearly so provocative. The cast included K. Todd Freeman, David Rainey, Philip Lehl, Alex Allen Morris, Jeffrey Bean, Annalee Jefferies, James Belcher, Elizabeth Heflin, Alice Gatling and Todd Waite -- a group of Houston's finest actors. They came together to tell the true stories of victims of a flawed judicial system that has put people to death for crimes they did not commit.