Theatre
Oscar Slater – The Trial That Shamed a City
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
four stars
With Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ensconced on-stage as narrator, you might anticipate a Sherlock Holmes whodunnit, full of dark secrets, missed clues and puzzling loose ends. Well, there’s plenty of such-like red herrings in the case of Oscar Slater, but while Conan Doyle did have a hand in the denouement, Stuart Hepburn’s brisk production is no fiction:it’s based on a true, and decidedly shameful, story.
On December 21, 1908, an 83 year old Glasgow spinster, Marion Gilchrist, was brutally murdered in her tenement flat and a diamond brooch was stolen. Who committed the callous crime? Even now, we’re not necessarily sure who attacked the old lady, but we do know who was accused, tried and sentenced to hang: a 36 year old German Jew with a dodgy past called Oscar Slater.
Conan Doyle and some of his peers – including the subsequently victimised Detective Trench – spoke out, recognising that it was prejudice and not justice that condemned Slater. There are plenty of recorded references to ‘dirty foreigners’ in the archives for writer/director Hepburn to use as local colour in his narrative – he does so astutely, knowing the century-old knee-jerk responses of witnesses and police are the shameful kin of the racist and anti-semitic commentary that is re-emerging in our own times.
Hepburn also brings to the fore the appalling way that whistle-blower Trench was mis-treated by conniving superiors, and he also gives Marion Gilchrist a voice from beyond the grave. No investigating man ever questioned why she never married, or why she cut every relative out of her considerable will. Her ‘might have been’ past is hinted at in some shadow-play – a nicely intriguing addition to a compelling tale well told by an outstanding cast, with Ron Donachie (Conan Doyle), Ashley Smith (Marion) and Kevin Lennon (Slater) filling a bare stage with vivid humanity.
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