Murmuring Judges

The British Trilogy #2

by David Hare

A young lawyer's involvement in her first case leads her through a criminal justice system - police, courts and prisons - which is cracking at the seams. Murmuring Judges is the second play in David Hare's highly acclaimed trilogy about British institutions. Racing Demon, which won four awards as Play of the Year in 1990, was the first part of the trilogy and examined the Church. The Absence of War, a play about the Labour Party, completed the trilogy.

Genres: Plays, Drama

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.

On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).

As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second part of Hare’s trilogy on Britain’s hallowed institutions, Murmuring Judges takes aim at the criminal justice system. It’s not a fabulous piece of theatre – it’s too focused on making a political point to reach the lofty heights of legal dramas such as A Few Good Men or Inherit the Wind (or even the problematic Merchant of Venice) – but it remains depressingly relevant almost thirty years later. Recommended.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a much meatier and more accessible play than ‘Knuckle’ which I’ve just read as well.

David Hare basically takes a forensic look at the judiciary, the police and prisons. He doesn’t much care for what he finds. Judges, barristers, their clerks are engaged in a world that is exclusive and distanced from those to whom it metes out justice. The police are under pressure to get results and have developed dubious methods for doing so; moreover, they are weary, cynical and demoralised from the disrespect they endure on the street from petty and professional criminals and from the paperwork they have to complete. And prison staff, while not unkind or brutal, are doggedly containing as best they can those they are sent to lock up, not all of whom, Hare judges, should be there.

In particular, Hare considers the case of one Gerard Mackinnon, an Irishman with a young family, struggling to earn a regular crust in London, and who finds himself casually driving for a couple of criminals well known to the police. Although it is a first offence, Mackinnon is locked up for 5 years. The depth of the uselessness of the judicial system is indicated by one of the play’s final scenes in which Mackinnon remarks to his young barrister supporter, who has been trying to get his sentence reduced, that no, thank you, he has plenty to read, and he is finding the books about Irish history very interesting:

“I’ve got books. It’s a book on Irish history. I’ve never been interested. But I’m sort of interested now. When I was brought up, it was always a background. But I laughed it off. It’s funny. I wonder why I did that. What I’m saying is... I’m not laughing now.... It’s like the world’s saying we’ve got a part for you. It’s like everyone’s saying, there’s a part you can play. All right, then. I’ll play it.”

By implication, Hare proposes this is a system that produces bitterness, a lack of faith in justice and thereby the criminals of the future. It certainly does not rehabilitate them, for Mackinnon’s professional partners will clearly carry on as before once they’re released. As a snippet of conversation shows, nothing is likely to make the judicial system better until pigs fly:

IRINA (a young barrister): Still, I heard on the radio you’re getting a new prison inquiry. You must be pleased.
BECKETT (a senior prison officer): Miss Platt, the only countries that have decent prisons are the ones where the government themselves have just been let out.

Irina and an aspiring police officer, Sandra, are the young people in the system whose energy and enthusiasm for doing a good job is not yet gone. But the drama puts them up against Sir Peter Edgecombe QC and his clerk, Woody, and DC Barry Hopper who have long ago accommodated themselves to the system and there are two long, tense (and intense) scenes in Act 2 where these oppositions are voiced forcefully. And although the forces of authority and practice are ranged in an inertia before them, Hare suggests at the end of the play that Irina and Sandra – both, significantly, women - are prepared to make a stand to try to make the male worlds of law, policing and prisons better. But how hopeful he is that anything will come of it is not obvious.

[Rems · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this play a couple of months ago, but I've only just come to review it now. Mainly because, at the time, I was partly left unsatisfied with how the whole play ended.

My biggest problem, I'd say, is the pacing. It takes a little while to get into when you're reading it alone - but once it gets into its own, it goes, and you're interested, just interested, in how everything is going to turn out. But then the next problem occurs - you get to the end, and it's really unsatisfactory. Nothing's really changed from the start - which, I suppose, is how Hare wants us to see the judical system, that it's not all bright and sunshine and daisies, that it's real, and sometimes that it's harsh. And there is a hope for change, in Sandra, but, at the same time, as a reader, you feel like there is something to be desired yet from the pages. It makes for good realism, but as a play, it just makes the thing feel pointless and worthless.

I don't really have much to say for the characters. They either annoyed me, or they didn't. Sandra was probably my favourite - the one poised with the most aptitude for change.

Another thing to add onto the characters, though, is that all I can see the police department as is characters out of Ashes to Ashes (the UK TV series). .... I shouldn't, but I do. I keep assigning them around, haha. Still, the police department was more interesting to me than the barrister segments. Going back to the characters that annoyed me, most of the characters in the Bar, including Irinia, weren't a favourite to me.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second in David Hare’s trilogy of plays about British institutions – although, to be pedantic, Murmuring Judges is about a series of institutions operating within the legal system. There is a central narrative that holds it all together – a young man is given a heavy sentence for being a driver for a burglary, a young lawyer takes up his case; the police might have done some dodgy dealing – but it is what is being held together that is interesting. The workings of the legal system are shown through a series of characters and their relationships, reaching from a Government Minister and Judge down to the criminals. One of the great strengths of the play is its clarity, the systems of power and privilege are laid out in front of us. But maybe this can also be seen as a limitation: the coherence of the work leaves little room for surprise: Murmuring Judges makes a series of points – or lays out its themes – with economy and intelligence, but they all seem a little obvious. In its multiple narrative lines involving a series of characters operating within different social spheres, Murmuring Judges reminded me of TV series such as The Wire and the first series of The Killing: Hare’s play lacks the complexity of narrative, but isn’t limited to a realist aesthetic. (Strangely, when Hare recently attempted such a TV series – Collateral – it was less successful.) If uncertainties are introduced into the play they are emotional uncertainties. As with the previous play in the trilogy – Racing Demon – we are given a series of points of view: although we become aware of hypocrisies and the illegal cutting of corners, each character is given a legitimacy: this isn’t a legal system where injustice is created by bad people doing bad things, everyone has their sense of right and are trying to operate within the system as best as they can – the doubts are about the way the system itself operates. If Murmuring Judges seems a little obvious thematically, I imagine a good production is emotionally much more problematic. (And perhaps we should note that Murmuring Judges was written for the National Theatre: it has a very large cast and Hare describes effects – such as transitions between scenes – that could be spectacular...although I wonder if they could overwhelm the thematic purpose of the play. And I wonder how smaller theatres and productions would manage.)

[Lucile Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Murmuring Judges by David Hare
This 1991 play is just as relevant now as it was then. It portrays a system falling apart and fairly corrupt. Although the staging would be a nightmare (a prison, a cop shop, a reception, an opera, various offices and the court itself), the characters are well-written and believable, even the bad cop who thinks he is doing the right thing. I would have liked to see more morality from the males, and I think the staging may have been too extreme. Hare also has sympathy for Irish workers who come to England for work. The young articling lawyer who tries to have a sentence reduced is way too naïve. Not a play for amateurs.

[TheSalmaZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this play for an essay I am writing on jurisprudential reflection in theatre. As it was something I read with writing that essay in mind, it was inevitable that I didn't like it as much as I could have done. As well as that, I find that plays are much more interesting for me to watch than read and if I had watched a performance of this, I might have loved it so much more. Having said that, I did enjoy this play and it was quite thought provoking, especially because I am a law student and this was an interesting perspective of the profession.

[Scout · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent play:

"Much of the humour of Murmuring Judges is ironic, for Hare offers no new revelations about our judiciary, which is still overwhelmingly male and from a narrow social strata, or about our overburdened police, so worn down by paperwork and abuse that idealism quickly turns to bitterness and prisons fill with people who need help not punishment."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/st...

[Arshi Zahoor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated, cliched, not very special- it doesn't have its own substance. The only saving grace in this book is the subtle underlying criticism of the legal tripartite which some may not even notice in their first read.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not brilliant. It felt quite outdated in a lot of its points and a bit cliche in others. And I'm not sure what it was getting at, other than the obvious 'the system is flawed' usual stuff.

[Simon Fletcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes a little cliched and a little dated but still a gripping play.