MISCARRIAGE of justice tales have long provided great opportunity for drama, both fictional and factual, from the Count of Monte Cristo to To Kill A Mockingbird, from 10 Rillington Place to the trial of Barry George (the Jill Dando murder).
History is littered with reports of the wrong people being convicted as a result of police stupidity, negligence - or worse.
And Scotland, sadly, can boast of being up there with the best - ie, the worst - of them.
New play Oscar Slater – The Trial That Shamed a City is now running, which tells the turn-of-the century tragic story of Slater, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant sentenced to death in 1909 for the brutal murder of 83 year-old Glasgow woman, Marion Gilchrist. But he didn’t do it.
The hangman’s noose , explains actor Kevin Lennon, who plays Stater, was avoided. Yet he still lost out on 17 years of his life. “Oscar Slater was framed by the police. But the case against him was almost laughable. As writer Stuart Hepburn says in one line ‘The perfidy of the police was extreme.’ The case was never solved, but it’s fairly clear they could have solved it. They obfuscated once they felt they’d got their man.”
Thankfully, as details of the conviction reached the public domain, Glasgow began to question the police, and protests were launched. At one point 20,000 people demanded Slater’s release.
The wrongly-jailed man also had one very high-profile supporter. “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became involved in the case,” says Lennon. Doyle was a fervent advocate of justice. He even paid for most of the costs of Slater’s appeal in 1928.
Ron Donachie plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while Ashley Smith plays Marion Gilchrist. “We learn of the story through Doyle, whose profile helped keep the story alive.”
This is Lennon’s fifth Oran Mor appearance, a testimony to his talent, having offered up terrific performances previously with a portrayal of Jean Paul Sartre in.
Lennon, who is also a musician and singer, however loves the contrast acting throws up. He reveals he thought of little else, from school drama days in Dumfries to Scottish Youth theatre to drama school.
Yet, while he was accepted for the prestigious Samuel Beckett Centre At Dublin’s Trinity College, aged just 17, what is a surprise is that on leaving drama college Lennon almost left the business.
“The drama college experience was amazing and a real rites of passage adventure,” he recalls. “But demanding. We’d often work 9am ‘till 9pm. he says. “And that was okay. I was so intense at the time, and I accepted this very tough process of self-investigation. That’s what I wanted. I’m a thinker.”
But perhaps he over-thought. Was left bare by the experience. “I came out of there and worked in an art shop,” he recalls. “And I was sort of content at the point, just living in Dublin in a flat with my pal. If anything, drama college made me not so sure I wanted to be an actor.”
Then came his Sliding Doors moment. A year before, having just left drama college, Lennon had flown back to Scotland to audition for Peter Pan.
He didn’t land the role but Rebecca Rogers of Theatre Babel now wanted him to come back and audition for a key role in the classic Tis Pity She’s A Whore. The problem was Lennon had no phone. No mobile. No landline. “Rebecca persisted,” says Lennon, smiling. “She called my granny, who gave her my sister’s number, who was living in Dublin at the time, who then called the art shop who passed on the message.”
Yet, she still wasn’t sure about getting on the acting carousel again. “I told my mum this and she coaxed me to have a go. And she paid my flight back to London.”
The result was his starring 2001 appearance. And Lennon hasn’t looked back since, appearing with a huge range of theatre and radio productions, and picking up the Best Actor from the CATS awards in Scotland.
“Now, I love what I do. I feel so privileged to be doing what I do. And I get to play a German immigrant with a slight Scots accent in a really great crime thriller.
Oscar Slater – The Trial That Shamed a City, Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday.
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