Twenty Minutes with the Devil at The Street, Canberra, June 17-25, 2022 @luisenantipoda

From Thom Giddens, University of Dundee, via the Law and CUlture mailing list, on behalf of Desmond Manderson:

Yes, after no less than three lockdown delays over the past two years, Twenty Minutes with the Devil is finally on. Fri 17 – Sat 25 June, at The Street, Canberra’s home of professional theatre.  Book now if you haven’t already done so – and pass the word on to your students, your colleagues, and your friends!

 

Des

 

 

Twenty Minutes with the Devil is a black comedy, a high-octane thriller, and non-stop entertainment. It is based on real life events surrounding the capture of Mexico’s most notorious narco in 2016. But beneath the headlines, the play probes deeper questions. It brings together the life work of its two authors, well-known legal scholars and teachers Luis Gómez Romero and Desmond Manderson. What does law and justice matter when they seem so very far apart?

 

Two lowly cops and a narco think they have all the answers. Angela believes that if you follow the law, justice will look after itself. Romulo knows better, but the hide of a cynic often conceals a revolutionary heart. El Ticho doesn’t care about justice but he treats the law as a plaything he can twist to his own advantage. Now they’re trapped in a love hotel in the middle of the desert. The army and the cartels are descending and no one knows who will live to tell the tale. The pressure of the ticking clock and the impending storm of violence forces all three to confront what they think matters in the world and what they are prepared to do – to survive.

 

The play is set against the terrible drug wars which have led to the brutal deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico alone, and destroyed its legal system, its police, its society. But drugs are just a symptom. All over the world, the gap between law and justice seems to yawn wider than ever.

 

Rómulo: Drug’s just the excuse, man, ‘coz the real drug is money. I never met anyone who had enough of it – and millions’d kill for it in a heartbeat. Money buys you violence — violence gets you money. It don’t come cheap. It costs. Know what? Reckon it’ll cost more and more and more and to hell with the rest of us.

 

Climate change, inequality, politics failing and governments giving up. These emergencies effect all of us. Mostly, we look the other way and try to get on with their lives. But our three characters do not have that luxury. It’s now or never. They are in lockdown. And as we all know, there’s nothing like a lockdown to concentrate the mind. Is justice part of the solution? Is law part of the problem? These are urgent questions, and time is running out.

 

El Ticho: Any minute, my men are going to come storming through that door. They’re not going to knock – room service. You think you can stop them? You and that flightless hairy-winged angel of the lord?