Joan Marcus
Mike Iveson, Susie Sokol, Vin Knight and Ben Williams (l.-r.) in the Elevator Repair Service production "Arguendo," at the Public Theater. The play is about a landmark 1991 case involving an Indiana strip club.
Lady Justice gets around.
She’s got her hands — and scales — full thanks to a full-court press of legal-themed plays this month.
On the docket: an experimental work about a sexy Supreme Court ruling, a Mississippi murder trial and a case that ends up in the highest court in all of England.
“Arguendo,” in previews at the Public Theater, is a new work from the Elevator Repair Service, a company known for “Gatz,” a nearly seven-hour verbatim stage take on “The Great Gatsby.”
The troupe moves from Great American Novel to titillating American court case.
“I have an interest in constitutional law,” says ERS artistic director John Collins. “I like to listen to oral arguments, which are downloadable. It’s my hobby.”
His pastime led to a word-for-word re-creation of a 1991 Supreme Court case. In the landmark Barnes v. Glen Theatre, a group of exotic dancers in South Bend, Ind., cited the First Amendment and challenged a ban on public nudity.
“Some of the language is dense and legalistic,” Collins says. “It’s hard to make heads or tails of it. But much is very accessible. And there are also large chunks of humor and absurdity.”
The verbatim in “Arguendo” recalls the format of “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,” which combines 1895 courtroom transcripts with writings by Wilde and his contemporaries.
“The case interested me as a theater artist,” says Collins. “It raises the difference of performance versus conduct. It’s a fascinating gray area.”
Blurred lines are part of Terence Rattigan’s 1946 drama, “The Winslow Boy,” now in previews at the American Airlines Theatre, where it opens Oct. 17.
The play is based on an actual incident in pre-World War I England that took place at the Royal Naval College, Osborne. It follows a young man who is wrongly accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and unceremoniously expelled from school.
His father goes, well, postal. He won’t stop until his son’s name — and his own — is cleared. Justice exacts a toll on the family.
“You expect a trial to be in the play,” says director Lindsay Posner, who directs the Roundabout Theatre Company. “But you’re never in the courtroom. The drama is the family.”
That said, Rattigan quotes from actual parliamentary debates and court transcripts. The 1948 and 1999 film versions include court scenes.
“It’s family drama in the tradition of Arthur Miller that looks at the deterioration of a family as a result of the case,” says Posner. “This is particularly relevant right now in terms of what’s happening with individual liberty and responsibility and justice.”
Those themes echo loudly in “A Time to Kill,” a dramatization of John Grisham’s debut 1989 legal novel, the 1996 film of which made a star out of Matthew McConaughey.
The plot follows a young lawyer who defends a black man accused of murdering two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter.
Rupert Holmes (“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”), who adapted the play (beginning previews Saturday at the Golden Theatre), believes the legal setting is ripe for drama.
“What I’ve always enjoyed about courtroom dramas,” says Holmes, “is that you’re taking often uncivilized deeds and bringing them into this orderly, ultracivilized setting.”
That natural tension explains why courtroom dramas are staples of the stage — long before “Law & Order,” “Twelve Angry Men,” “Witness for the Prosecution” and “Inherit the Wind” got audiences riled up about justice.
“All those works swirled in my head,” says Holmes. “There’s no other setting where people shut up because a man hits a gavel. The decorum of a courtroom, to me, holds that emotion in check, and as a result you feel it ready to burst. It’s the height of theatricality — a courtroom is a theater.”
jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com
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