Robert Tanitch review Clarence Darrow at The Old Vic, London SE1
Kevin Spacey takes his leave of the Old Vic, where he has been artistic director these last 11 years, with one of his favourite roles, a role which he has played twice before, once on television and once on stage in an American play called Inherit the Wind.
It is a role which has attracted actors of such stature as Paul Muni, Spencer Tracy, Orson Welles and Henry Fonda and it will be counted amongst Spacey’s best.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) was the greatest American trial lawyer of the 20th century. He began his career as a Labour Union lawyer and ended it as a criminal defence lawyer,
What we are offered is not a play, but a one-man show, a monologue by David W Rintels, which he based on Irving Stone’s Clarence Darrow for the Defense.
The script is not an autobiography. It is clips, cuttings and snippets, collected to form a liberal statement about human liberty and relies on Darrow’s intellectual and moral integrity to hold and move the audience; and on Spacey’s ability to project that integrity.
Darrow always championed the poor and underprivileged. He was against capital punishment. He defended over 100 accused murderers; and only one was sentenced to death. “Mercy”, he said, “is the highest tribute of man. All life is worth saving.”
His fame today rests on two trials in the mid-1920’s. The Monkey Trial in which a young teacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Leopold/Loeb trial in which two rich young men murdered a little boy for the sheer hell of it.
Kevin Spacey’s terrific performance is notable for its rhetorical power, its energy, passion, humanity, anger, humour and his engaging rapport with the audience.
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