This year marks the quatercentenary of the death of courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Ralegh (his apparently preferred spelling, rather than “Raleigh”). He was executed for violating the terms of his pardon, following imprisonment upon conviction for treason against King James I in 1603. Actor Oliver Chris has compiled a verbatim drama from the various records of that trial. It makes for interesting and often stirring viewing, but leaves a number of questions unanswered, one of which is that no allusion is made to the fact that, having been sentenced to death in this trial, Ralegh lived a further 15 years.

Chris’s staging gained in historical atmosphere where I saw it, in the Great Hall in Winchester where the trial itself had taken place; after a clutch of performances there, it moves to the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse for a week or so. It will be more compact in the Wanamaker, perhaps even a little cramped; that house’s candlelight may also have a mixed effect, reducing the sense of commonality from the full auditorium lighting in Winchester but perhaps adding to the sense of drama.

The staging is in modern dress: Simon Paisley Day’s Ralegh is clad in a grey business suit and carrying a briefcase, though also sporting a single earring. Day plays Ralegh as largely assured that there is insufficient verifiable evidence to prove his part in a conspiracy to do away with James and his family, paid for with Spanish gold; he grows more strident as the tribunal of Privy Counsellors move the goalposts, at one point declaring that some statutes on the basic protocols of justice have been repealed because they were “not convenient”. He is also periodically wound up by, though not as much as he winds up, his principal prosecutor, Attorney General Elizabeth Coke.

There’s the second question: it’s fine casting women to play roles such as Edward Coke and Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham, but why feminise these actual historical figures? In any case, Nathalie Armin is an impassioned, terrier-like Coke; his performance in this trial seems quite at odds with his subsequent wisdom as Chief Justice which I recall from my days studying law. Armin’s Coke gives not an inch and several times resorts to downright invective.

Chris seems to be trying to square the circle between fidelity to his historical material and giving the proceedings a contemporary immediacy. Alas, he sometimes opens gaps up where he has attempted to seal them. It’s a nice touch to empanel a group of theatregoers to sit as the jury, but the play can make no allowances for them deciding upon acquittal, which given our current view of the principles of justice is almost a foregone conclusion. On the night I saw it, the announcement by the clerk of a guilty verdict led not only to a loud murmuring from the audience but more than one shake of the head from the jury seats. All in all it’s an honourable exercise but problematic as either history or drama.

Written for the Financial Times.