Legal Loopholes Delight in “Ben Butler”: Sara Murphy Authors Article in Maine Lawyers Review
Ben Butler, a comedy by Richard Strand, kicks off Portland Stage’s 45th season and runs from September 25 – October 21, 2018. The play is “a comedic take on an actual event during the Civil War, when a creative legal argument, with the benefit of good timing, opened the door to aid hundreds of thousands of slaves.”
Sara notes in her article that “the play could be viewed as a 90-minute continuing legal education course in managing client relationships, artful negotiation, and the grey area we all find in a legal world that at first often seems black and white.”
The play centers on whether Ben Butler, a trial lawyer from Massachusetts with “little military skill,” should return three runaway slaves to their owner, a colonel in the Confederate Army, when they seek sanctuary at Fort Monroe, Virginia. How might Butler “twist” or interpret seemingly-explicit laws about returning runaway slaves?
Click here to read Sara's complete analysis and discussion of the play, and how citizens today continue to be inundated by the collision of morality and the law. And please visit Portland Stage for tickets to this play and other upcoming performances.