‘A Passion for Justice: An Encounter With Clarence Darrow’
Where: Olney Theatre, 2001 Olney-Spring Road, Olney, Md.
When: Various times, now through Sept. 6
Info: $26 to $49; discounts available for students, military, students and groups; 301-924-3400; olneytheatre.org
Just what are the law and justice?
It’s a fair question when you consider “A Passion for Justice: An Encounter with Clarence Darrow.” Perhaps best known for the 1926 John T. Scopes trial that revolved around teaching evolution in schools, Darrow also handled many bigger-than-life cases involving everything from labor to murder and discrimination.
The play — now staged at Olney Theatre — recounts much of Darrow’s professional life in a one-act play relying heavily on many of the closing arguments the famed litigator gave during high-profile cases.
Paul Morella, who wrote the play with Jack Marshall, is the sole actor in the production. As such, he gives an amazingly passionate performance as the attorney, the only one of five children who shared his parents’ love of reading and ideas, which eventually took him to the law. The play examines much of Darrow’s brilliance as an attorney but also some of his dark side and misdeeds, plus his penchant for disparaging those who disagreed with his views.
Although Morella has played Clarence Darrow in various forms since the play was first staged almost a decade ago, his characterization is fresh and vibrant. There’s no metaphoric foot dragging when he discusses various aspects of his personal life — his wives, his longtime mistress, his various dalliances — and his professional stumbles.
What’s interesting, though, is the name of the play versus some of Darrow’s own thoughts about the law as cited in the production.
He discusses at length a time in 1885 when he read a book that discussed how people committed crimes because nature drove them to it and that jails only worsened the problem.
“We have only recently begun to recognize that every man is to a great extent what his heredity and environment have made him,” this play’s Darrow reads from the book as he talks about how those words sparked a revelation within him.
That revelation took the young lawyer to Chicago, “where the truly important issues were being fought,” and into the life of “playing railroad lawyer by day and shouting about radical politics and the evils of the robber barons over seven card stud at night.”
The revelation to me, anyway, during this production was that Darrow wanted to sway others to his own view of law and form of justice, although he notes at various times that justice can never be attained.
If you’ve ever watched the character Alan Shore on the now-canceled television show “Boston Legal,” you’ll have an idea of how Darrow is portrayed. Justice to him seemed to be 11-hour closing arguments that called on judges and juries to rule with their hearts based on the concept that death penalties and other harsh punishments exacerbate criminal behavior.
Consider the last high-profile case recounted in this production, Leopold and Loeb. These were two teens who kidnapped, tortured and killed another teen and then left the body while they ate dinner.
Darrow fought successfully to spare the teens the death penalty and won despite the public’s outcries for “the same mercy that they gave” the murdered boy.
“Is that the law? Is that justice?” Darrow asked in a lengthy closing argument.
It’s an interesting question that each theatergoer must decide.
