Errand of Mercy

Errand of Mercy

                The Clarence Darrow fashioned by writer Jack Marshall and actor Paul Morella is a man suffering from a very curious affliction.

                No, not the famed lawyer's womanizing or his desire to prove his worth to a father long since dead or even his talent to distract a jury with a match, a cigar and a paper clip, though all these things were Darrow--never Clarence, just Darrow to his friends.

                The affliction, in this case, was empathy--a sensitivity to the pain of his fellow man so acute, he simply had to take action to help in order to ease his own suffering.

                You can see it in Morella's face as he walks among the detritus of his own life, law books and newspapers strewn across the stage of the Everyman Theater in a performance of "A Passion for Justice: An Encounter with Clarence Darrow."  Picking up a paper with a headline about one his famous cases, whether it be one of his many battles in defense of labor union causes, a murder case that put racial prejudice on trial, or the children-murdering-child case of Leopold and Loeb, one sees the pain, agitation, weariness and suffering with each paused step, each glance around his desk, each wipe of his face with his hankerchief.

                "Passion for Justice," we learn from the playbill, is often performed by Morella "before some of the most elite and prestigious trial lawyers, law firms, legal organizations and law schools in the country," but this is clearly a play for an audience beyond lawyers, a play appreciated by the audience which, with few exceptions, was made up primarily of AARP subscribers--that is, people who might actually know who Clarence Darrow was.

                As a 40something, I know Darrow from the famed Scopes "monkey" trial (which inspired another play, "Inherit the Wind") and for the quote, "There is no justice." However, after watching the play, I learned that Darrow liked girls (a lot), played baseball as a youth, had an emotionally absent father, once took a lawsuit for a $15 horse harness, nearly died of mastoiditis (a bone infection of the skull), and came to believe that it is heredity and environment, not God nor free will, which shapes and determines our lives.

                In two acts, the play is broken up into several scenes, each exploring a different milestone "crime of the century" case in Darrow's career. The lighting turns a bright yellowish orange to indicate a change of scene, as Morella's Darrow goes from speaking about his life to making his case before the audience which transforms into a jury. With the tale of each case, we learn more about Darrow and his growth as a human being, a man more a poet than a lawyer (Morella's Darrow often quotes poetry in his legal summations), a sociologist who, in his study of the human condition, finds he cannot stand idly by, but must get involved to "rescue the suffering when I could," as Darrow himself once said.

                Morella's performance put me in mind of another actor, Spencer Tracy, who himself played Darrow in "Inherit the Wind," though it was not this performance that came to mind, but the role Spencer played as a judge in "Judgment at Nuremberg." Tracy's character speaks at trial of the "sanctity of a single human life," and it is the preservation of that sanctity that drives the character of Darrow in "Passion." Perhaps unbeknownst to Darrow himself as it was happening, he transformed from a skirt-dollar-and-headline chaser to a man on a very serious and honorable mission.  

                As Morella so concludes just prior to thunderous applause and standing ovation at curtain's fall, "All life is worth saving...and mercy is the highest attribute of man." Perhaps this play might be best entitled, "Passion for Mercy"--for Morella's Darrow, justice and mercy were inextricably intertwined, capital punishment was a fancy name for killing and what mattered most in a man's life was never the plaques and trophies of individual achievement. A man's true legacy lies in the ideas he fostered and the causes for which he fought.

                "Passion for Justice" continues its run at the Everyman Theatre at 1727 N. Charles Street, now through June 26^th. Call the Box Office at 410-752-2208 or email boxoffice@everymantheatre.org