High drama: Yorick was a stickler for court dress
Obiter likes nothing more than to hear of budding thespians in the legal community treading the boards and strutting their luvvy-stuff. So we were delighted to hear that thanks to a sponsorship deal with Hampstead Theatre, staff at publisher Sweet & Maxwell got to take part in playwriting and acting seminars with theatre employees. After one month’s preparations, they wrote and performed six ten-minute-long plays at Hampstead’s ‘Space’ studio. Pictured (above) are Sweet & Maxwell’s Michael Docherty, Kate Percival and Tyler McKinley in ‘The Three Rs’, a play about a train journey rather than an exciting drama about the skills legal textbook editors need. The accompanying release did make the extraordinary claim that ‘the next Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Judy Dench, or even Harold Pinter could soon be discovered at Sweet & Maxwell’. They may have rivals in their bid for a theatrical knighthood, however, as staff from Welsh firm Leo Abse & Cohen have also ‘been following in the footsteps of Rumpole and Kavanagh QC’ with a similar tie-up with their local theatres. In ‘Alas poor Yorick QC, I knew his brief fees well’ mode are partner Mike Jenkins and head of corporate Sian Elvis.