Lady Justice Hallett to take to stage to hear the case for and against the last Plantagenet king



He was one of the most maligned monarchs in English history. Half a millennium on, the quest for the truth about Richard III has not faded. Will Crookback Dick ever receive the justice he deserves?

That is the question Lady Justice Hallett, who adjudicated in the dispute over last Plantagenet king’s reburial, hopes to settle later this month when she will preside over his fictional resurrection and trial for serial murder.

An expert in the divisive legal legacy of Richard, the senior judge will take to the stage to oversee the case against his common portrayal as a scheming, Machiavellian hunchback in a one-night only dramatic reassessment at the Novello theatre in London on 29 April. The audience will act as jury, voting on whether or not to find the 15th-century king guilty of ordering the death of his two nephews in the Tower.

The play’s immediate aim is to raise money for the Shakespeare Schools Foundation and provide entertainment on a Sunday evening when most theatres are closed. Like the playwright’s s own work, however, the Trial of Richard III is multilayered, offering more subtle messages about comic improvisation, the significance of the law and educational empowerment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Richard III mosaic, made out of Lego, at a visitor centre in Leicester. His remains were discovered under a car park in the city. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

A fridge magnet of Richard rests on Hallett’s mantelpiece in the Royal Courts of Justice, a gift from a colleague, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, who sat alongside her during an extraordinary hearing in 2014 into where the remains of the king – disinterred by archaeologists from under a car park in Leicester – should eventually be entombed.

The Plantagenet Alliance, made up of members of Richard’s distant Yorkist descendants, argued that the monarch, who was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485,in should not be buried in nearby Leicester Cathedral but returned to York Minster.

Hallett, Haddon-Cave and Mr Justice Ousely eventually ruled in Leicester’s favour. The justice secretary at the time, Chris Grayling, dismissed the case as a “complete waste of taxpayer’s money” but, Hallett insisted, it was “pretty fascinating”. She discovered “how many millions of descendants you can acquire over a few hundred years”.

Adding that case was really important to a lot of people, Hallett said judges should be “about providing access to justice for as many people as possible. I can see that some people thought it was a waste of time. As a judge, I didn’t feel it was.”

In The Trial of Richard III, the comedian Hugh Dennis will play the role of jury foreman, while children from three London schools will act out scenes to form evidence in the case.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lars Eidinger as Richard III in Schaubühne Berlin’s production at Edinburgh in 2016. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

It has been partially scripted by the Bafta-winning writer Jonathan Myerson. The QCs John Kelsey-Fry and Sallie Bennett-Jenkins will appear for the defence and Ian Winter and Jonathan Laidlaw for the prosecution.

Hallett said she always wanted to act and that the play combined her love of law and theatre. “It also helps improve public understanding of the law,” she said. “It’s time people realise how important it is. Without the rule of law we won’t have a society worth living in.”



Courtroom re-enactments, Hallett said, engaged the public’s imagination in legal issues. One of the questions in The Trial of Richard III, may be whether royalty can be tried in their own courts – or do they have immunity?

Theatre audiences are more fickle than juries in deciding who to acquit, Hallett acknowledged, adding: “I suspect it depends on who is playing the part. I’m a great believer in the jury system. In a jury, you know you have someone’s fate in your hands.”