FRINGE FESTIVAL REVIEW--
"JOHNNY LAW"
“Johnny Law, Courtroom Crusader” stands squarely on the corner where the inconsistencies of the American legal system meet the edginess of the NY International Fringe Festival.
Tim Ryan Meinischmidt and Tom L. Fox, Esq. wrote this mini-masterpiece. Tim is the actor on stage playing Johnny. Tom is the real-life lawyer in private practice in Los Angeles.
Johnny acts out his resume from law school, to Department of Justice, on to Public Defender’s office, then to private practice in criminal and entertainment law. The case he makes for his career choices are interspersed with a current teenage drug case he has and how he is handling it.
Johnny looks, talks and moves like a real lawyer. His comments on our legal system are incisive. There is no doubt that he will win, but he manages to keep the suspense as to just how. What he needs is a Perry Mason-moment, when it will all work out and by a dramatic ploy of the witness for the prosecution confessing at the trial...but can such a moment occur in this realistic story Johnny is telling us?
Those of us who were born during the Perry Mason era and evolved into “Law and Order” addicts, kept waiting for just that moment so that truth would win again. It would be a spoiler to say what happens--but all who caught this show were the winners for what was spirited piece of intelligent entertainment.
Kudos to director Christopher Fessenden and company for an excellent production.
More information at www.johnnylawesq.net
--Celia Sharpe
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