By Julie McCrossin -
Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of the Doughty Street Chambers, the UK’s leading human rights practice. A prolific writer, judge and academic, his trademark Hypotheticals, broadcast on television, has made his distinctive style familiar to a general audience. On the eve of a national speaking tour, “Dreaming Too Loud – An Evening with Geoffrey Robertson”, he talks to JULIE MCCROSSIN about ISIS, the Magna Carta, the Australian Constitution, and the precedent for a one-man show by a barrister.
In May, Geoffrey Robertson will tour Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane and Canberra with an almost unique stage show. “I’m following Shirley MacLaine,” he tells me, laughing on the telephone from his chambers in London, “but I can’t sing and I will not dance.”
The show will incorporate television footage of Robertson’s work in international courts and tribunals and his experience hosting a gathering of leaders in Africa.
The audiovisuals in the production will include archival excerpts from Hypotheticals featuring, among other luminaries, Gough Whitlam, Tony Abbott, Annabel Crabb, Marcia Langton and Germaine Greer – all looking very young.
And, of course, there will be Robertson himself: prowling the stage with his characteristic mix of larrikin humour, gravitas, the voice with a “vowel transplant” (as the satirical magazine Private Eye once described his accent) and his marvellous capacity to play with the English language.
