Trial by Jury

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 353, 29 March 1946, Page 12

Trial by Jury

HE presentation of Trial by Jury from 4YO was the best yet of the Gilbert andySullivan operas. A one-acter containing no spoken dialogue, it needed no hacking to fit it to the Procrustean bed of the NBS timetable. I find the Macmillan volume of the words of these operas an excellent standby when listening to them; with the libretto before me, I miss no part of the humour (even those abstruse musical jokes which the composer allotted to the inner chorus parts) Trial by Jury is, of course, a satirical farce dealing with a case of breach-of-promise, in which the jury is immediately bowled over by the beauty of the fair heroine and turns a conveniently deaf ear to the plea of the defendant; when the latter offers to "marry one lady to-day and marry the other to-morrow," the court solemnly agrees in true Gilbertian style that "to marry two at once is Burglaree," and the damsel. finally marries the susceptible’ judge. In few countries of the world can one imagine such a treasonable joke as Trial by Jury not only passing the censor, but finding among its most ardent admirers those members of the legal profession whose very reason for existence is here so rudely questioned. Truly the British sense of humour is unique. * * * By a coincidence, on the same evening as Trial by Jury with its farcical breach-of-promise case, the 4ZB series "Impudent Impostors" contained the story of one Mary Bateman, who was involved in similar proceedings, and in her case no flippant counsel or love-sick jury came to the rescue, although her case was ridiculous enough to furnish material for any number of comic operas. This infatuated girl persuaded a doting father to institute breach-of-promise proceedings against a nobleman with whom she had never so much as spoken a word; in court her flimsy case collapsed like a pack of cards, It left me pondering on the strange mentality of anyone who imagines financial redress to be panacea for a broken heart. It would seem that all such legal proceedings must contain dn element of that incredible buffoonery which is present alike in the true case of Mary Bateman and the imaginary case of those characters of Trial by Jury, Edwin and Angelina. —