Conflict in Court

At times, it can feel as though sitting quietly in the dark is a relative rarity on the Fringe, where every other show involves token audience involvement. Liam Rudden’s interactive courtroom drama is typical of the tendency, unthinkingly roping theatregoers into its lacklustre action.

On one side of the courtroom, a shamed Tory MP, suing redtop The Daily Globe for its claim that he spent the night with a rent boy. On the other, the paper’s hard-nosed editor, defending her actions to the hilt. Rudden’s play puts its audience into the position of the jury, asking us to decide the outcome of what we are watching. Choose your own verdict.

The premise raises any number of pertinent questions. To what extent is a politician’s personal life in the public interest? When does investigative journalism become simply digging for dirt? Is justice really served by a system that rewards whoever can spin the best story from the available evidence? Rudden, however, shows minimal interest in any of these. Instead, he sets up two equally unpleasant pantomime baddies, forcing the audience—sorry, jury—to choose the lesser of two evils.

To add to the case against, considerable liberties are taken with both legal convention and narrative credibility. What is initially set up as an immersive courtroom experience soon collapses into a clearly contrived mess, blithely abandoning any attempt at plausibility. The obligatory twist, meanwhile, manages to be both glaringly predictable and wonkily inconsistent with other elements of the plot. Case dismissed.