Trial by Jury

By Gilbert & Sullivan

HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Dramatic Premise

The Tipstaff (played by Tim Channon, Consultant at Barry Nilsson) enters the Banco Court and stands with solemnity due the moment. For reasons which are never explained, his long jacket is adorned with the heads of two bin chickens! Banging his staff against the floor, the Tipstaff calls the Court to order.

“From bias free of every kind, this trial must be tried!”

Now Edwin, the Defendant (played by His Honour, Justice Francois Kunc), enters the room. Despite being dressed in a blue and white striped bath robe, he enters with the majesty of a king. Edwin launches into lyrical verse and explains that whilst he once loved the Plaintiff, Angelina, she came to bore him. So, it was only natural that he should abandon his promise of marriage and take up with another woman.

The jury (played by members of the Bar Choir) do not take kindly to Edwin, their reminisces of their own wayward youths notwithstanding.

Now the Judge (played by Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AM FAAL RSA) is literally holding court. In one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s most revered songs, she explains how she rose from being “an impecunious party” to becoming a barrister with a thriving practice when she promised to marry a rich attorney’s grandson in return for briefs which came “trooping gaily“. Having achieved her success at the Bar, however, the future Judge had no further use for the rich attorney’s grandson, so she “threw him over“.

“The rich attorney my character high tried vainly to disparage…and now, if you please, I’m ready to try, this Breach of Promise of Marriage!”

For now she’s a Judge (“and a good Judge, too”)

Finally, Angelina, the Plaintiff (played by Catherine Kelso, Partner at Gilbert + Tobin) enters the Banco Court. Sultry and seductive, she recounts Edwin’s treachery whilst holding all in the Court spellbound.

But how will this story end? Will Angelina recapture Edwin’s heart? Or will she give her heart to another?

What a Production!

Like many lovers of musical theatre, I can trace my adoration back to seeing a Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera. For me, it was a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance.

This production of Trial by Jury was a joy.

It was somewhat surreal to return to the court room where I was admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court (all those years ago), and where I subsequently moved my wife’s admission, in order to see a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

And, truth-be-told, I never thought I’d see the day where a current Justice of the Supreme Court would enter the same court room and ham it up whilst playing that dastardly defendant – and all-round treacherous cad – Edwin. What joyous fun!

Kudos to The Bar Choir, directed by retired Supreme Court Judge, Peter Hidden AM KC, and accompanist, Simon Kenway.

Special mention must also be made of Lyricist, Director and Producer, Victoria Hartstein, of Chalfont Chambers. As the program declares / warns, Victoria brought some of W.S. Gilbert’s wonderful lyrics “somewhat into the present day“.

There are references to Google, TikTok, the Wagga Wagga Petty Session and “coming out”.

But there was one update which I found most inspiring.

W.S Gilbert originally included this couplet in The Judge’s Song:

“She may very well pass for forty-three
In the dusk, with a light behind her!”

It’s one of the most celebrated lines in the Gilbert & Sullivan canon.

Yet, having changed the gender of both the Judge and her love-interest-of-convenience, Victoria Hartstein had the courage to update the famous couplet thus:

He may very well pass for George Clooney,
In the dusk, with a light behind him!”

Like many Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, Trial by Jury ends with “joy unbounded“.

For me, my unbounded joy was in seeing members of my profession cast aside their overly-serious demeanours, forget (for a moment) the pressures of work and embrace the joy of art and of expression and of song and of dance. In other words, to embrace a life outside their professional obligations. To be poets.

And that – in case you’ve missed it – is exactly why I enjoy theatre and why I decided to memorialise my thoughts in The Arched Eyebrow Review.