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WPCNR On the Aisle. Review by John F. Bailey. November 16, 2005: The White Plains Performing Arts Center lived up to its mission statement last night with the World Premiere of All Too Human, a tour de force of perhaps America’s greatest lawyer, dead solid perfectly written and cleverly performed by another great lawyer, Henry Miller. Mr. Miller is the personal injury attorney of choice of not only the White Plains, but the American legal community, who maintains his offices a block away from the theater at 99 Court Street.
All Too Human is a unicorn of a serious play: it makes you think, hang on every line, mucks into the raw conflict of mankind’s motivations and conditions, and sends you out into the night uplifted with (of all things), a new found respect for the possibilities of the legal profession.
Mr. Miller achieves this by exploring the motivations and the causes of perhaps America’s real Perry Mason – Clarence Darrow a man who was a legend of American law in his own lifetime.
All Too Human is self-produced by Henry Miller, the White Plains attorney, senior partner of Clark, Gagliardi & Miller at 99 Court Street. There is a tendency on the part of critics to come down harshly on these “vanity plays.” Executing an “evening-with” play is no easy task: you’re limited to the intrigue of your original material; you have to organize the material carefully, and your personality has to transfix and become the character to the audience.
Mr. Miller is glorious guilty on all three counts as charged: from his first appearance on the bare bones set (easy chair, lecturn, defense table, and courtroom balustrade against blue curtained backdrop — Mr. Miller has got to deliver it all) wearing a rumpled gray suit, white shirt and red suspenders, Mr. Miller, graying as Darrow, greets you as a guest in his apartment and proceeds to regale you with tales of his life and famous cases. All that’s missing is a glass of bourbon for each member of the audience.
Set in the 1930s when Darrow was at the end of his life, the audience spends an evening with Darrow in his Chicago apartment listening to the old litigator reflect, ruminate and give the young legal bucks “inside baseball” and his observations of the legal profession.
The opening night audience of White Plains litigators, (we suspect they did not know what to expect), were seduced against their collective wills by Miller’s natural script and his own ability to create Darrow-like magic. He won them over with charm, folksiness, some inside legal jokes, and played the cynical crowd with the skill of the great Darrow himself.
Miller’s script has an easy flow to it with no awkward “objections.” It is funny, moving and motivating. He brings the issues of Darrow’s famous labor cases, (a champion against the robber barons), his defense of Loeb and Leopold ( one of the first arguments against capital punishment), the Scopes Monkey Trial (the irony of the evolution trial that as “Darrow” says has to be stopped, and the issues are still with us today), not to mention those old standbys of playwrights through time: the mystery of life and the purpose of law.
The play entertains, educates and elevates the practice of law, but more than that, promotes the “practice of ideas.”
Miller on his opening night did justice to his superbly organized script, defending it well with a performance that held the audience’s attention by a combination of conversation with the audience about his foibles and feelings, and deft segues into flashbacks to deliveries of Darrow’s famous summations. It built. He organized the material well, and explored the nautiluses of Darrow’s career becoming a master raconteur in the process.
For the person not interested in law, rest assured, the excitement of the issues of the human condition: oppression, suppression, cruelty, exploitation come vividly alive as Miller brings alive his strategies that achieved landmark judgments in American law. If you’re having trouble persuading your brainy son or daughter to attend law school, this play will turn them around.
Miller’s ellocution is something many professional actors (and lawyers) should study. You hear every word Miller says in this play, even when the WPPAC microphone does not work. It is a testimony to Miller’s writing that in a play of 90 minutes straight, you are held fascinated. His delivery is on occasion stuttered with “buts,” “stutters” and a little shakiness, but this may have been clever acting technique to convey the illusion of extemporaneous conversation with the audience, and ingeniously makes you pay closer attention. He delivers slowly, with emphasis, and you hang on his every word!
All Too Human recalls Steve Allen’s Meeting of the Minds shows, on PBS but rather than the cameo one-dimensional stand-ups of celebrities of the past in those shows, Miller creates a real character here.
From his piercing brown eyed glare at the close of his Leopold and Loeb summarization as he works a judge, to his reducing William Jennings Bryant’s creationism argument to absurdity with Darrow’s ridiculing words, the romance and flexibility of language and persuasion is on target.
Miller recreates Darrow’s devastating logic in his summations with gravitas, irony, and the controlled hyperbole that won landmark judgments that forged worker’s rights in this country. Miller’s own legal career is somewhat Darrowesque, winning landmark judgments in tort law in defending the disenfranchised. He has a lot of the crusader in him and it is obvious he knows his Darrow.
His best scene: his explanation of the incident where Darrow was tried twice on charges of bribing two jurists in California. His delivery of the “stacked deck” defense gives plenty of thoughts to think.
The play makes America’s labor history come alive and illuminates the legal issues that are still with us today. It is both history lesson, style prep course for lawyers to see how it’s done, and a down-home talking to one’s conscience. It is much like Plato’s Socratic dialogues but livelier with whimsy, drama, pathos. You may be offended by some of Darrow’s views on religion, though, but do not let that deter you from seeing this play.
In All Too Human, Miller’s care in building a natural scriptural symmetry from how the play opens and how he closes sends the audience out smiling. He ends the play on a high. He received a minute standing ovation for his performance. At the end of the play, two lawyers in the audience were talking, “Well, Henry you done us proud,” the other said to no one imparticular. Another lawyer noted, “Well, at least we don’t have to wait for a verdict.”
This distinguished gentleman of the press has reached a verdict. I find the defendant, Henry Miller, Guilty as charged of impersonating Clarence Darrow. He was Clarence Darrow.
All Too Human plays nightly the rest of this week at 8 and Sunday at 2 PM at White Plains Performing Arts Center. For information on tickets, contact 888-977-2250.
