Word: semicorrupt
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Regardless of locale, most lawyer novels are easterns, in which the court system is a semicorrupt mess but the heroic judge/prosecutor/defense attorney finds the loophole that achieves justice. This one is a horseless, string-'em- up western whose message is that black hats are felonizing homesteaders and courts are run by sociobabbling liberals. Come back, Shane...
Admirably, the star-studded version that opened in New York City's Central Park last week solves the problem in a subtler way: by transposing the action to the Wild West of frontier days. The "Padua" of swinging-door saloons and semicorrupt sheriffs is recognizably not of our era, yet equally recognizably a precursor to it; thus the outrageous sexual politics onstage is not ours, but pertinent to it. Director A.J. Antoon has taken considerable liberties (one character is called Joe Bob), and he uses the setting as much for slapstick buffoonery as for literary insight. But the show...
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