The Trial of Ben Hall will be back by popular demand in August.
May 2025 marked 160 years since the bushranger's death and the Forbes Shire Council Heritage Advisory Committee was inspired to mark the occasion with the performance of a unique local play.
Ben Hall was of course shot dead without a trial and is buried at Forbes Cemetery.
Then local solicitor Dominic Williams wrote The Trial of Ben Hall for the inaugural Ben Hall Festival, and it was rewritten for Law Week in 1986.
Mr Williams said he hoped it would entertain and educate about Ben Hall, "whose name continues to grow in Australian legend as a folklore hero, more wronged against than wrong himself.
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"I trust the Trial of Ben Hall will not only entertain and educate but lead to a better understanding of the enigma that was Ben Hall – it being the trial that Ben Hall never received," he wrote in 1986.
When the play was brought back to the stage this year, the one-night-only performance by local volunteers booked out within 24 hours.
On the night, it was a hit.
Now the Forbes Shire Council Heritage Advisory Committee will present the play again on Saturday 2 August and Sunday 3 August.
Everyone is encouraged to come along and find out the imagined past if Ben Hall had been given a trial and discover more about our notorious Mr Hall, who was in fact the first person in Australia to be declared a bushranger.
The audience is encouraged to fully participate in the evening: to react to the good and the bad, to the police bias and inequity in the court process.
Jurors will be selected from the audience on the evening of the performance so please dress appropriately - period costume is ideal.
No one knows the outcome of the judgment until the night - the cast has prepared for both guilty and not guilty findings.
The play will be presented in the former St Andrews Church at 5pm on the Saturday, and 11am on the Sunday.
Tickets $10 or $5 for pensioners, online at www.123tix.com.au
