Johnny Law: Courtroom Crusader

By: Michael Lazan

It was once said of a major playwright (last name O’Neill) that his unshakable commitment could make relatively unworkable scenarios work. Which brings us to Johnny Law: Courtroom Crusader, a curious and engaging New York International Fringe Festival entry about lawyers. What is Johnny Law? Better question is – who is Johnny Law? This Johnny Law is the fictional embodiment of a lawyer, Thomas L. Fox, Esq., who apparently practices in the criminal field. The show consists of this Johnny Law getting in front of the audience and telling stories that are adapted from the life of the Fox, interspersed with commentary. Not too tantalized yet? That’s because it’s not usually a great idea to create a show from someone’s work stories. Fox’s legal stories are really not that unusual, as legal stories go. Yet this show is a different sort of self-reflective navel gaze. You sense that writer/performer Tim Ryan Meinelschmidt and Fox have a deep and passionate interest in criminal law, and criminal rights in general. That passion piques the emotion in this mostly engaging play, which amazingly sustains itself for 75 minutes. The ostensible setup involves one particular case, not especially compelling. Our hero Johnny is in a hotel room, poised to go to trial to defend a student accused of drug possession. The student is adamant about his innocence and refuses a plea bargain; Johnny is convinced that he can win the case at trial. At the end of the play, Johnny’s legal instincts are proven keen, as the young man is exonerated! Thank God for criminal defense lawyers! More interesting than the main story are the side roads taken. Meinelschmidt and Fox are amusing and clever when they preach about the importance of criminal rights, especially when they mock the judicial system. Johnny even provides free legal advice on how to respond to a request for a field sobriety (don’t do it, it’s unreliable). During these sequences, there are more than enough brightly written words as Meinelschmidt bounces from point to point, very much a lawyer on trial before his jury – the audience. At the very best moments in the piece, Johnny even seems to talk a bit of street poetry, something like a semi-supernatural character from Richard Price novel. There is only Meinelschmidt on stage. As the manic and overdramatic criminal lawyer, he delivers on this difficult mission to entertain through legal stories. Talking mostly to the audience as Johnny, Meinelschmidt’s self-mocking, dazedly ironic tone serves to satisfactorily soften the solipsistic nature of the material. He also ably drops into the voices of other characters, including a judge, a law professor, prisoners, fellow lawyers. As very smoothly directed by Christopher Fessenden, Meinelschmidt also moves with authority and wastes little time. With clever sound effects and a very clean approach to lighting (by Harry John Shepard), this is a smart show from well-coiffed head to well-shined wing-tip.