Trying

Synopsis

About a profound friendship between two strangers ­ at dramatically different points in their lives - who unexpectedly find they have more in common than they thought. Internationally famous, cantankerous and in failing health, the 81 year old Judge Francis Biddle awaits the new secretary that his wife has forced upon him. Sarah is very young and inexperienced and, even worse, from Canada. Francis doesn’t trust her. Francis doesn’t trust anyone ­ his last assistant managed to burn half his books. Despite undergoing her own marital pressures and impending motherhood, Sarah is determined to get the Judge’s life in order ­ without crying in the bathroom

Our Review:

20 March 2009

It's the autumn of 1967 and 25-year-old Sarah starts a new job as a part-time secretary. Her employer is 81-year-old Judge Biddle, former Attorney General under Roosevelt and Chief American Judge at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.  She is a fresh-faced can-do Canadian girl, whose last job was copy-writing on Madison Avenue. He is a man for whom the adjective irascible might have been invented.

The start of their relationship is not auspicious. The Judge’s previous secretary had managed to set fire to the office burning many precious manuscripts, a fact which he refers to regularly. He does not expect Sarah to last:“You’ll go in there to cry” he tells her, pointing to the bathroom. But Sarah is a feisty lass,  rought up by a bully of a father. She won’t take such treatment from the Judge, even if his family did know Henry James and George Washington.

The play tracks their brief relationship, until the summer of the following year when he dies. What plot th...

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Latest User Review

rds - 7 April 2009:

Superb performances from Michael Craig as Judge Francis Biddle and Meghan Popiel as his browbeaten secretary Sara with an h Schoor. Joanna McClelland Glass pens characters which turn easily from the two to the three dimensional on stage and, as in this case, in the right hands transcends theatre. She is not a well known writer in the UK, but I have been fortunate enough to have seen, in Stratford, Canada, her last play Palmer Park. A challenging piece about racially mixed communities in the aftermath of the Detroit riots of the 1960's, a time when, almost overnight, 100,000 names disappeared from the Detroit telephone directory. A play our National Theatre could and should tackle if it weren't so preoccupied with the flights of fancy Mr Hytner has made us endure of late! "Trying" was anything but. Its run at the Finborough may be sold out? Try to see it anyway you won't be disappointed....

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