I don’t believe in socialism

…The Old Vic, Waterloo

'I don't believe in socialism but I do believe the government should own the railroad companies and not the railroad companies the government.’

‘The government should not be building bigger and better prisons but bigger and better men.’

These are imprecise quotes from ‘Clarence Darrow’, a play by David W. Rintel with many great lines. It would be nice to get hold of the text and read it.

I left the theatre full of admiration for two men: Clarence Darrow, a defence lawyer in the US, and Kevin Spacey, the actor who played him and whose monologue kept the audience spellbound for 45 minutes either side of a 20 minute interval. It was especially impressive that he did this surrounded by the audience on four sides. The stage which was at the Old Vic when I was last there 18 months ago to see ‘Kiss Me Kate’ had become part of the auditorium.

The play was about Clarence Darrow looking back on his life and reflecting on the unpromising cases he defended, including two trade unionists who planted a bomb that killed 20 people, a teacher who was teaching evolution rather than what is now called creationism, two teenagers (18 and 19) from wealthy homes who murdered a 14 year-old boy and a black doctor who bought a house in a white neighbourhood and who was accused of murdering a white man. Clarence Darrow seemed very much an ultra-liberal lawyer of our time but in fact lived from 1857 to 1938.

The reviews which best sum up my thoughts on the play are by Charles Spencer in The Telegraph and Michael Billington in The Guardian.