Top silk dreams out loud
t’s daytime in a WA jail and a hopeful prisoner drafts a letter to human-rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson. He’s not the first prisoner to write to the prominent Australian seeking help and he won’t be the last, with the high-profile Queen’s Counsel’s latest visit likely to stir up further interest in his support.
The prominent British-Australian lawyer will be in Perth early next week for his new stage show Dreaming Too Loud, named after a book he published 18 months ago which proposed alternative role models for the nation.
“I do have some prisoners from WA prisons asking me to take their cases,” Robertson acknowledges before making a joke. “Perhaps the authorities could give them ‘theatre leave’ so they could come to Dreaming Too Loud.”
The barrister last visited WA for a public appearance in late 2013 at the Weld Club and was a high-profile-but-cancelled keynote speaker for the Perth Writers Festival in February.
“Sadly on this occasion I will have very little time in Perth,” he says of his latest whistle- stop. “I do love WA — Broome and the Kimberley, of course, but I have never had a chance to visit Margaret River.”
The London-based lawyer, writer and broadcaster is married to Puberty Blues co-author Kathy Lette and is famed among Baby Boomers for his ABC show Hypotheticals, where he gathered 16 luminaries and asked them to play themselves in a hypothetical scenario.
“I’ve found it a useful way of checking the morality of my own decisions,” he says.
Robertson admits there are certain things he’s not prepared to do on stage but his new show has a wider purpose.
“I cannot dance, I refuse to sing and I don’t tell jokes — people may find some of my stories amusing but that’s because they are true,” he says.
“It’s an opportunity to explain the importance of human rights and how Australia can better contribute to them. It will also raise money for some good but destitute human- rights charities.”
The barrister is well known for his London chambers’ defence of Wikileaks founder Australian Julian Assange, who is among the notable clients he’ll likely chat about in the one-man show.
“I can talk about visits to death row and my time with torturers and bring the latest news from the Ecuadorian Embassy,” Robertson says. “There is a danger that I might talk a little about the Australian Constitution but I have defended Deep Throat and the Sex Pistols so I can promise that parts of this exhibition of myself will be X-rated.”
He says he’s likely to talk about role models at the show, which starts in Sydney on Saturday before moving to Perth and Melbourne.
“We need new role models,” he argues, affirming that Tom Kernot, a teacher who foiled a Ned Kelly train massacre, is among his recommendations.
“I can’t believe we iconise Ned Kelly and not the incredibly brave schoolteacher who stopped ‘Jihad Ned’ and his planned terrorist atrocity at Glenrowan.”
Locally, Perth Theatre Trust chairman Peter Blaxell, a former Supreme Court judge, is among those Robertson admires. “Peter Blaxall’s inquiry into child sex abuse at St Andrews Hostel (Katanning) was a model of its kind,” he says, noting many similar inquiries abroad draw on his own book The Case of The Pope in their investigations.
“Frankly, the only role model I had at an early age was Lew Hoad.
“His final-set victory in the rubber that clinched the Davis Cup for Australia in 1953 — I was six and heard it on the radio — inspired me ever after.
“Later I did meet and work with inspirational people like (Czech dissident-turned- statesman) Vaclav Havel and (barrister and Rumpole of the Bailey creator) John Mortimer — I’m sure I will talk about them in the show.”
Geoffrey Robertson presentsDreaming Too Loud at His Majesty's Theatre (8pm) on Tuesday May 5. Book at Ticketek.
