Reviews

Comedy star portrays scourge of the bosses

Clarence darrowwith Leslie Nielsenat Brighton's Theatre Royal to 29 April and Nottingham's Theatre Royal from 2 to 6 MayJEREMY FLEMINGThis one-man play uses a simple set that remains the same throughout, with different locations indicated by lighting changes.

The most celebrated US lawyer of the last century is played by Leslie Nielsen, in a departure from the comic roles that made him famous.

The characterisation glosses over Darrow's early life, in a hick backwater of Ohio, to his first cases in Chicago where he represented railroad union leader Eugene Debs, who was arrested for conspiracy following the Pullman railway workers' strike of 1894.George Pullman's striking workers - who laboured for one of US industry's most oppressive robber-barons - were fired on by police while demonstrating.

Seven were killed.

The only people arrested and charged were the union leader and his colleagues.Darrow successfully defended Debs, and established himself as a name among criminal labour lawyers in the US.

Some of the descriptions of the trial have resonances for a contemporary audience, such as Darrow's observation that: 'Government ownership of the railroad is preferable to railroad ownership of the government.'In 1902 Darrow was appointed by President Roosevelt to act as an arbitrator in the Pennsylvania anthracite mining strikes.Again, the conditions in which the miners were working was desperate: ten-year-olds working underground shifts up to 24 hours long, without proper holidays.

If miners lost limbs, the owners would deny liability; they refused to pay for a wooden leg for man who lost a leg working in the mine.The action moves to Los Angeles, where Darrow acted for a man accused of bombing the Los Angeles Times building.

Realising that his client was going to lose, Darrow struck a deal to save him from the noose; but incurred the wrath of the unions who thought he had betrayed them.During the interval a few people muttered that while the story was fascinating, Clarence Darrow is an unconvincingly virtuous character.

The opening of the second half would have set them at ease, as Darrow relates his own arrest following the Los Angeles case, for attempting to bribe a juror.

Although acquitted, Darrow's involvement appears ambiguous.One of the most interesting cases the play explores is the case of John Scopes, a Tennessee science teacher who challenged the state's criminalisation of the teaching of evolutionary theory in classrooms.

The famous courtroom battle between Darrow and the prosecutor William 'the fundamentalist Pope' Bryan, in which Bryan took to the witness stand as a self-proclaimed expert on the Bible, is amusingly played.Mr Nielsen's performance is relaxed and effective, although he is the only character on stage.

His voice is ungrating and the delivery means that the spectator becomes embroiled in this fascinating insight into some of the most interesting US crime cases.They also give a flavour of the American pioneering spirit that affects all of the characters: from the robber-baron mine-owner, who says he loves children while working ten-year-olds like slaves, through the masseuses of Chicago - whom Darrow defended - to Darrow himself.The lawyer's profound sense of duty contributed to his fight to win the eight-hour-day for US workers, and he acted for 104 murderers who faced the death penalty - none of whom was executed.Reviews

How Darrow would have defended OJ

Leslie Nielsen was brought up in Canada - his father a Danish emigre who worked as a Mountie, his mother Welsh.

Although he made his name in Hollywood, he still considers himself Canadian, he tells Jeremy Fleming: 'The people, the cold, so few people, there's something about it that melds you together, you can't get that anywhere.' He describes his family as 'modest, simple folk', but his success is not exclusive; one of his two brothers became deputy prime minister of Canada.Mr Nielsen began as a straight actor, but made his name in comedy with starring roles in the film Airplane and the Police Squad and Naked Gun series of movies.

Now he has returned to a serious role with the play about legendary US criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Mr Nielsen seems passionate about the lawyer: 'I just think he was a remarkable man, dealing with the great forces of society to get the working man the eight-hour day, and to defend 104 men facing the death penalty, and literally save their lives, and defending the union, and the oppressed, and the labourer against the powerhouses of money and greed...

he fought them all.'One might speculate that Mr Nielsen has a slightly romantic idea about the law, but having been married three times, and divorced too, he has some bitter experiences of lawyers: 'They are antagonists, they're representing the other side, and they're manipulating you, at a time when you're the most vulnerable and in the most pain.' He says he knows lawyers who use the law as a 'personal weapon'.He has no respect for the lawyers who represented OJ Simpson - his co-star in the Naked Gun films - who was acquitted of the murder of his wife.

The lawyers were 'mediocre', says Mr Nielsen.

'They happened to win, but there was nothing that had any vision or class about it in my opinion,' he adds.Mr Nielsen believed at the time of the trial that OJ was guilty, and has not changed his mind since.

'That's how I feel today, and there's no point in my not stating my mind and saying what I feel,' he says.But what if Clarence Darrow had been OJ's lawyer? Mr Nielsen says Darrow would have shown us things about OJ that he [Mr Nielsen] did not know about his former colleague.

'And if OJ had been acquitted it would have been on that basis, and not just on mistakes that were made at the trial - not just on technicalities.'Mr Nielsen says the US today is a country devoid of people like Clarence Darrow.