My Fair Lawyer is a brisk little farce from Sydney playwright and lawyer Tony Laumberg, performed by Bondi Theatre Company at Bondi Pavilion, and it gleefully proves that in law, as in life, the paperwork may be orderly, but the people are gloriously not. The play skewers family secrets, cultural misunderstandings, and the general absurdity of the Australian legal profession with a very sharp pen and a raised eyebrow.
At the centre is Henry Crowley, superbly played by Martin Portus, the grandly self-important managing partner of Sydney’s biggest law firm, and his wife Margaret, played with delicious bite by Deirdre Campbell. After 25 years of childless marriage, Margaret keeps domestic stability alive with sarcasm and a steadily refilled wine glass, while Henry enjoys the sort of calm, predictable life in St Ives that only exists right before everything explodes.
And explode it does, when Cheryl, a sharp young law graduate from Cessnock played cockily by Felicity Cribb, turns up on the doorstep claiming to be Henry’s illegitimate daughter and demanding both answers and a job. Henry responds with the kind of denial that suggests he is not merely surprised, but professionally offended by reality, while Margaret discovers that the arrival of a surprise daughter is somehow both devastating and mildly interesting.
Adding to the complications, Henry and Margaret are secretly seeing the same psychiatrist, Dr. Rahmish J. Punjab (played with great energy by Gantanter Singh Gill), an eccentric, irrepressible & unethical Indian psychiatrist. His methods are unconventional, his motives are suspiciously profitable, and his timing is catastrophically bad. He’s less “healing mind specialist” and more “entrepreneur with a couch.” A psychiatrist in name, an opportunist in practice, Dr. Punjab is more interested in “bill first, diagnose later”. His methods are unconventional, his boundaries are nonexistent, and his interest in actual healing appears secondary to financial growth. His attempts to “help” only add layers of confusion, cultural misfires, and perfectly timed one-liners that land harder than a judge’s gavel. In fact, his unique approach to therapy appears to involve maximizing confusion and invoice opportunities
Dr Rahmish Punjab becomes the source of much of the comedy, reminiscent of Appu from The Simpsons, and serves as the catalyst for a series of awkward situations. He keeps the plot wobbling forward like a shopping trolley with one bad wheel.
His casting feels a bit stereotypical of an Indian character, with the accent, tandoori and pappadum references, call-centre imagery, and immigration jokes.
As Henry rushes to protect his reputation, the whole affair spirals into comedic disaster, culminating in a DNA test that, conveniently for him, comes back inconclusive and leaves Cheryl looking for her next father-figure victim.
In the end, My Fair Lawyer is a cheerful little reminder that beneath tailored suits and polished boardrooms, the legal profession is held together by denial, ego, and very selective memory. Tony Laumberg’s farce doesn’t just poke fun at lawyers—it quietly suggests they might be their own worst clients.
Underneath the sharp dialogue and absurd coincidences, My Fair Lawyer suggests something less amusing: that the systems designed to impose order—law, marriage, even therapy—are often just better-dressed versions of the chaos they claim to manage.
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