“PHONE VOICEOVER: Thank you for calling the Beckett Estate. Your call is important to us. Please continue to wait and an operator will be with you shortly.”
So opens Godot is a Woman, a play written by Silent Faces Theatre, which dramatises one consequence of the long post-mortem term of copyright and moral rights: in the play, the actors – two female and one non binary – wait patiently, in an automated telephone queue, to speak to the estate of playwright Samuel Beckett about the right to perform his play Waiting for Godot which, as is well known, is reserved exclusively (by Beckett and now his estate) to male performers. As their position in the automated queue rapidly worsens – they soon reach ‘number 9,127’ – one of the actors astutely remarks: ‘That’s gonna be a long wait’. Indeed it will be: in the UK, copyright (and moral rights) don’t expire until 70 years after the author’s death, with certain moral rights perpetual in other countries (e.g. France). In the play, what follows is a comic yet deep engagement with the issues – legal, social and political: Beckett himself was opposed to the play being performed by women, but ‘now, of course, we’re in an era concerned with identity politics like never before’ (script, p.19).
Godot is a Woman is one example of the capacity for theatre to critique law and legal themes, and this play was the subject of the very first arts review – an essay by Catherine Pocock – that I saw through to publication on joining the academic journal Law and Humanities as its first Arts Reviews Editor in November 2023. Scholarly engagement with law’s representation in the arts has always been a central concern for Law and Humanities, from its foundation by Prof. Gary Watt and Prof. Paul Raffield in 2007 (see the first editorial, p. viii), but the arts reviews section was significantly expanded when I joined the journal (now to cover up to 6 pieces per year).
Consequently, in the latest Issue of Law and Humanities – just published – we offer something new: I have curated our arts reviews section to place a spotlight on theatre. In three reviews, our reviewers reflect on recent plays which tackle quite different legal themes. Yet in placing them side-by-side, framed by a single editorial, their common ground also becomes apparent: we realise that these three dramatic works are also connected through their shared concern with the critique of social power and injustice at the present moment; each play raises urgent questions for us to respond to now.
First, international lawyer Dr Kristin Hausler reviews Joel Tan’s new play Scenes from a Repatriation, which debuted at the Royal Court in April this year and explores the return of cultural artefacts by Western museums to communities of origin. As we express in our editorial, Tan’s play “is true to the reputation of the Royal Court in every respect: it takes a difficult subject, of current political import, and subjects it to the most edgy and challenging treatment possible.”
In presenting a return of “the very worst kind”, Tan’s play “boldly critiques power on every level and in every context created by this uncomfortable imagined repatriation” (Editorial, Law & Humanities, 2025,19(2), p.193). In doing so, Tan’s play highlights the importance of the empirical study of the life of cultural objects after repatriation, the subject pioneered by Hausler’s Leverhulme Trust funded research and the subject of her recently published open-access monograph: Beyond Restitution, co-authored with Elke Selter (2025, Institute of Art & Law: Art Law Library, Bloomsbury).
Production photographs by Alex Brenner featuring the actors Kaja Chan, Sky Yang, Fiona Hampton and Jon Chew. Courtesy of the Royal Court.
The meeting of scholarly and theatrical minds is also played out in Dr Alice Diver’s review of the new drama The Marian Hotel, first performed last year in a short run in Northern Ireland, and which is the first play by new playwright Caitriona Cunningham. Rooted in Cunningham’s own lived experience, the play dramatises the widespread forced adoption of babies of unmarried pregnant women and girls, effected through Mother and Baby Institutions. The critical power of The Marian Hotel stems not just from the fact that the play is a form of Cunningham’s own testimony, in turn feeding into wider mass testimony gathering process currently underway in Northern Ireland; as Diver, the author of Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature (2023), recognises, of vital importance is Cunningham’s decision to include an adoptee in her play: The Marian Hotel effects “a theatrical push-back against deeply ingrained myths in both law and literature” as to adoption as a ‘happy ending’ for the adoptee (Editorial, Ibid, p.194).
The final arts piece in the current Issue is an essay about the drama Grenfell: in the Words of Survivors by playwright Gillian Slovo, comprised of the verbatim testimony collated by Slovo from survivors of the Grenfell tragedy, as performed at the National Theatre (co-directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike). Dr Emma Patchett, who viewed the performance online through National Theatre at Home, reflects on the continuing significance of Slovo’s play, some two years after its debut at The National Theatre as heated debates sparked by the Government’s proposal to knock down the remnants of Grenfell Tower played out in the media. Patchett argues that the play goes beyond the need for survivors to be heard, also to expose, through the play’s creative staging, the deep-seated spatial injustices which enabled the tragedy to occur.
This arts reviews ‘spotlight on theatre’ in the latest Issue of Law and Humanities is a small step in an exciting project which has the potential to change our scholarly landscape. As I expressed at our annual Law and Humanities event (this year convened by Prof. Rebecca Probert at the University of Exeter), our expanded arts reviews section is of great value to our community: in building a body of arts reviews, we are increasing the connections which we see, as scholars, between our work and the cultural sphere. We will, in time, through the arts reviews pages of this journal, form our own cultural record: a creative process in which we will both forge new connections between different cultural works, and between the ideas which our different scholar reviewers see in diverse cultural works.
Importantly, our scholarly ‘canon’ of the arts is not driven by commercial imperatives – the brand power of Hollywood stars performing in the glitzy West End – which sometimes drives interest in the arts by the popular press. Rather, the sole motor driving our work is the value of the arts to knowledge. And, importantly, in an age in which AI technology is perceived to threaten the primacy of human creativity, and to be accelerating the devaluing of creative labour in the arts, our interest is in cultural works which display outstanding human originality. With this wider context in view, I am delighted to have recently expanded my remit at the journal going forward: to become Arts Editor (rather than Arts Reviews Editor) so as to support research articles reflecting on the arts as well as shorter reviews and essays. In doing so, I will be working closely with General Editor Prof. David Gurnham, our scholarly community and partners in the cultural sphere, and alongside our Book Reviews Editor Prof. Matteo Nicolini. As I have previously expressed on this blog, our journal’s engagement with the arts is at is best when it is driven by our community and taken forward in partnership with gatekeepers in the cultural sector which make our scholarship possible. We value all these relationships. If you would like to be involved, please know I will always be happy to hear from you!
For more reviews of drama in Law and Humanities please see: Dr Joseph Owen’s essay about Anmol Vellani’s play ‘Innocence’ which premiered in India last summer (adapting Kafka’s ‘The Trial’) and the review by Dr Claudia Zichi and Dr Paola Zichi of the dance-drama ‘Ruination’ by Ben Duke as staged at the Royal Opera House last December by Lost Dog Dance/Royal Ballet. And coming up next year: current plans are to cover the testimony play ‘London Road’ by Alecky Blythe, set to music by Adam Cork, as performed at The National Theatre last June (directed by Rufus Norris), once CPS reporting restrictions relating to ongoing legal proceedings are lifted.
LATEST NEWS: Law and Humanities has just published a Call For Papers for its 2026 Roundtable on the theme of ‘Visions of Democracy in Art and Literature’ convened by Dr Róisín Á Costello, to take place in person at Trinity College Dublin on 19 June 2026. It goes without saying that scholarly papers exploring recent arts productions (e.g. theatre, fiction, visual art) and relating to the event’s theme are warmly encouraged!
The Marian Hotel will be performed at Unity Theatre, Liverpool, in February 2026. For booking see here. To support further performances of this play, please see here.
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