Murmuring Judges - David Hare

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It has to be said, Hare is a fantastic playwright. Although I was required to study Murmuring Judges as an A level text a few years ago, I would have enjoyed reading this play anyway.

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.

Hare has most definitely done his research for this play...and his depiction of the three levels making up the Enlgish legal system couldn't have been portrayed in any better a way than it has been. If nothing else, you will gain a lot of knowledge about the legal system from this play, even if you don't care to understand the deeper fallacies and corruptions disclosed by 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. We realise truths about our Judiciary system, which is still overwhelmingly male and from a narrow social strata, and 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.

Many different themes come into play in Murmuring Judges, apart from the main theme that the Judiciary system is in three very separate levels (and classes), with the prisoners and prison staff being at the bottom, the police in the middle and the bar staff at the top, and different levels and types of corruption being portrayed in each. One of the scenes actually shows all three levels at the same time, pointing out their distinct differences.

The Guardian describes this play as "Like a superior and witheringly funny cross between The Bill, Rumpole of the Bailey and many TV prison dramas" which I think is very fitting.

Published by Faber and Faber.
RRP £7.99, but available from Amazon used for only 75p!! Bargain.