Quentin Letts
Tanya
Moodie, as the judge, was not quite deadpan enough for me. one sympathises: an actor wants to engage the audience, but Miss Moodie overdoes, to a small degree, the handwaving and bulgy-eye gestures.
emma Fielding’s prosecutor is a thoroughly believable cleverclogs, the sort who will always value theory and its lofty moral principles over the practicalities of human responses to a crisis.
This is a case that pits law versus humanity, moral philosophy versus common sense. you may find your mind wandering to the recent case of Sgt alexander Blackman, pursued by lawyers to a battle field in aghanistan.
‘The world is not a seminar for law students,’ says the defence lawyer. ‘ Die Wurde des Menschen
ist unantastbar,’ says an inscription over the court (‘ human dignity is inviolable’). But does the law, in all its occasionally impractical certitude, not sometimes violate sense, and is sense not part of human dignity?
Since you ask, the Hammersmith audience on Tuesday night found Major Koch not guilty by 166 votes to 101.
Be Kind to your office colleagues: that is the message from Gloria, a new american play which opens in the Manhattan offices of a glossy magazine. its pretty young staff are far from friendly to a middle- aged colleague, Gloria. She holds a drinks party and almost no one attends. Gloria exacts revenge.
The rest of the play deals with the consequences of that jolting comeuppance, which certainly wakes you up in time for your interval snifter. Playwright Branden Jacobs- Jenkins offers a few insights, not least that new york is a miserable place for 20- something office workers (it was never exactly the eden some would have had us believe).
yet his play is over-wordy, its structure unwieldy and the language unexciting. Who is the central character? What is the tale’s main thrust?
Michael Longhurst’s production is sleekly staged. Though i found some of the dialogue inaudible — the fault of my dull ears or actors gabbling through a thicket of a script? — Colin Morgan and Kae alexander put in good-looking turns as editorial assistants alongside ellie Kendrick, who is about to reprise her role as Meera Reed in TV’s Game of Thrones.
The more powerful character, as is often the case, is a soft-spoken figure (played well by Bo Poraj), who bottles up his feelings to the point of breaking.