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Full house at Oxford gasps at many twists and turns of tense courtroom drama




The Verdict at the Oxford Playhouse from July 11 to 15. Review by JON LEWIS

BARRY Reed’s 1980 novel The Verdict, which was made into a multi-Oscar nominated film by Sidney Lumet in 1982, is now a stage play written by first-time playwright Margaret May Hobbs.

Michael Lunney’s accessible Middle Ground Theatre Company production, originally staged in 2017, attracted a full house to the Oxford Playhouse that gasped audibly at the many twists and turns in the plot suggesting a strong engagement with the narrative.

The Verdict
The Verdict

Jason Merrells plays the charismatic alcoholic attorney Frank Galvin, now in his 50s, separated from his wife and children and working in a ramshackle office in Boston.

Once the second-best lawyer on graduating, he’s now a cynical ambulance-chaser with a light-touch involvement with his cases.

After lying to his client, Mrs McDaid (Sarah Shelton), that he had been to visit her daughter Debbie who remains in a vegetative state in a diocese-owned hospital after something went wrong during the birth of her third child, he undergoes a kind of conversion on witnessing her frail state of existence and renews interest in the case.

The Verdict
The Verdict

The story is essentially one of the underdog taking on the power structure, which in Boston is the Catholic church, personified by the avuncular Bishop Brophy (Richard Walsh).

The excitement in the play concerns how Galvin can outmanoeuvre in court the wily, richer attorney, J Edgar Concannon (Nigel Barber) while a side-plot involves Galvin’s nascent relationship with a sexy barmaid, Donna (Reanne Farley).

Galvin discovers his main witnesses have left the city so is reduced to calling on a decent, elderly expert for hire, the African-American Dr Thompson (Okon Jones) while relying on his mentor, also elderly, the Jewish attorney with ailing health, Moe Katz (Vincent Pirillo) who uncovers illegal practices by the opposing legal team.

The split set of Meehan’s Bar and Galvin’s Office with a backcloth photo of central Boston, which are replaced by a courtroom after the interval (designed by Lunney, who also takes on two of the characters, the barman and a doctor), and the Irish tunes played during scene changes provide a strong sense of place to the drama.

A diverting entertainment.



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