2 – 7 November 2009

This courtroom drama has James Highwood, a well-known presenter of a TV programme on “British Justice”, charged with the murder of his severely handicapped baby son. He comes into conflict with the Judge and the Prosecutor, as he battles to have his intentions understood.

CAST:

Margaret Casely, Q.C: Jean Wilde
PC Ramsden: Ara Sotoudeh
Judge: Steve Parsons
James Highwood: Oliver Harvey-Vallender
Dr Simon Kerr: Tony O'Hagan
Dr Hannah Radzinski: Louise Price
Jeremy Ackroyd: Roger Warren
Jean Highwood: Zofja Zolna

CREATIVE TEAM:

Director: Graham Walker
Costumes: Claire Hickey
Lighting design: Patrick Ryan

REVIEW:

Gripping drama gets the verdict

Rough Justice
Hall Green Little Theatre
****
TERENCE Frisby's courtroom drama is presented for all its worth by a company that gives its all. Graham Walker's studio production grabs its audience from the start and never remotely indicates that it is about to release its hold
On trial is a man who admits killing his nine-month-old brain-damaged son. He is a television presenter and a newspaper columnist - and the playwright has not given the defendant that sort of background for nothing.

Oliver Harvey-Vallender, as the man in the dock, powerfully exploits the flamboyance, the defiance and the pig-headedness that sit so easily on some public figures whose everyday world is the media. He rapidly engages in verbal fisticuffs, not only with the prosecuting counsel but with the judge himself - a pretty boneheaded battle that has its own consequences.

This is an excellent account of unreined passion - and, eventually indeed, of disastrously crumbling confidence.

It is a huge role - and one that is matched, blow for blow, by that of Jean Wilde, as the prosecuting Queen's Counsel. Here is a legal luminary appropriately assertive, unequivocally quick to exploit a perceived weakness, and yet, beneath the public face, an understanding and sympathetic adversary.

BLOW FOR BLOW
Zofja Zolna is often riveting as the defendant's wife. Hers is a turmoil of emotions and her wide eyes and pale face, framed by a curtain of red hair, excel at expressing them, especially when she is not saying a word. It's a face that crumples in adversity and holds the attention compellingly as she listens to the judge delivering his verdict.
In such company, the judge himself (Steve Parsons) is no slouch. He has not been allotted much in the way of whimsical witticisms but this is a performance that brims with judicial dignity and wisdom as he seeks both to help and to restrain an undisciplined and tormented defendant.

Roger Warren, too, is pleasingly persuasive as the solicitor accompanying a headstrong man who has elected to represent himself. The whole production, staged largely in black, does credit to everyone associated with it.

7.11.09.
John Slim