JURY PM by Tony Guerin – A Reading

The NEW ‘New-Writing’ slot at this year’s Festival of Politics goes to Listowel playwright, Tony Guerin, for his legal drama ‘Jury PM’.  The play sees the gathering of six jury members for a drinks following a rape trial in which the accused was acquitted by a 10 to 2 majority verdict. The defendant, a well-heeled and expensively represented Irishman, was accused of raping a foreign national following a marathon drinking session. Sue, a budding author, invites her jury colleagues to reflect on the case and to discuss their attitudes as research for a book she is writing about her jury experience.

Unlike the play “12 Angry Men”  Tony Guerin’s play brings together six angry, prejudiced and deeply uncomfortable men and women whose court room frustrations erupt as the drink flows. Their reasons for accepting Sue’s invitation (and those of the jury members who did not turn up ) are explored through humorously dark, drink induced, scalding exchanges. The ensuing release of pent-up tensions sees jurors using issues such as equality, racism, rape, migrants, kangaroo courts, sexism, the legal system, wealth and class being used to justify their votes in the not-guilty verdict.

Tony’s 2002 play ‘Solo Run’ exposed the rampant authoritarian violence of the Catholic church in its treatment of Listowel woman Peggy McCarthy both in her life and her tragic cruel death. It is the subject of Conor Keane’s RTE Radio documentary ‘In Shame, Love, In Shame’ which recently (October 2018) won the best International Radio Award in the Premios Ondas Awards – seen as Spain’s equivalent of the BAFTAs.

Cast: Barbara Bergin, Gabrielle Breathnach, Brendan Laird, Deirdre Monaghan, Frank O’Sullivan, Jack Walsh

Co-ordinator Vinnie McCabe