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Paul Morella looks awful.

Crossing the stage of the Kentlands Arts Barn, the normally boyish-looking actor smiles and shakes the grey hair he sports to play famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.

"As the years go by, I need less and less makeup," he says.

Morella has been playing Darrow in "A Passion for Justice: The Clarence Darrow Story" since 2000; the show opens at the Arts Barn on Thursday.

"I was fascinated by the one-person show vehicle," Morella says. "It was like working without a net."

Unable to get the rights to an already written biographical play, Morella and American Century Theater's Jack Marshall and Terry Kester agreed to put together a Darrow play of their own.

"We naively thought, ‘Let's make our own play; let's break the rules.'"

And they did, creating a warts-and-all look at the defense attorney who became one of the most famous lawyers of all time. The historic trials are here — the Scopes "Monkey Trial, Leopold-Loeb, the landmark 1925 civil rights trial of Ossian Sweet — but there's a sense of Darrow's humanity, too.

"He was the kind of advocate who thought criminals were made," Morella explains. "‘Love the sinner, hate the sin' was his famous saying, and Darrow's gift is this innate empathy he had for his fellow man."

Law life

Morella's not a lawyer, to paraphrase the old joke, but he played one on TV. He has played a lot of lawyers, most notably opposite Julia Roberts in "The Pelican Brief," and teaches a class on the art of persuasion as part of the Trial Advocacy Program at the Washington College of Law. He's the son of lawyers, and since he started playing Darrow, he finds himself frequently in the company of lawyers — performing at their conventions, dinners and professional gatherings.

"I was always fascinated by the dynamic of the courtroom," he says. "People make a mistake when they think it's all about the accolades. It's about the connection, the communion, the things that bring us together in our thinking.

"A trial lawyer needs to have a kind of seductive power of persuasion."

As does an actor. Morella grew up in Rockville and Bethesda; he holds a master of fine arts degree in acting from Catholic University. He has spent the last quarter century on D.C. area stages, performing a range of leading roles and landing a Helen Hayes Award nomination for his portrayal of another famous lawyer, Roy Cohn, in "Angels in America."

It's not really ‘acting,'" he says, "It's finding similarities between yourself on the character … finding those reasons, learning to love the character and embracing the things that make the character unique.

"I find that sympathy is not what you have to go for to be liked; it's empathy. Empathy makes it more real and genuine."

Simplicity

Morella says he likes "getting lost" in Darrow, getting under the man's skin. But who is Darrow anyway? And why should we be interested in him now?

Clarence Darrow was born in 1857 in Ohio; his father was an abolitionist and his mother, a women's rights advocate who was active in the early women's suffrage movement. He started as a corporate lawyer, moving to Chicago to work for the railroad — but soon was defending the president of the striking railworker's union.

Darrow's labor law career was derailed when he was charged with attempting to bribe a juror — Morella sees this as having a humanizing effect on Darrow —and so he went into criminal law. Soon, he was moving from one high-profile case to another, making a name for himself until he was a bit of a superstar.

"People would come for miles to hear his summations," Morella says. "And to think he delivered them extemporaneously — it's astonishing!

"He had one foot in the present and one in the future," the actor adds. "He knew he was setting a precedent, shaping the future of the law."

And he was. Perhaps the most famous of Darrow's cases was one he lost: the Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow squared off against William Jennings Bryan, defending a Tennessee teacher who was accused of teaching evolution in a public school, contrary to the law. It was a trial that captured the imagination of the nation.

"Darrow's fame came in the aftermath of Scopes," Morella says. "And he impacted everything: race, civil rights, capital punishment, the argument for evolution.

"For someone who was an atheist — an agnostic — he lived a more Christian life than the most hard-core Christian," he adds. "Darrow wanted to love his fellow man because it was right; he thought we should show mercy because we can."

Morella's grasp of his character is strong. He says the show runs quite a bit like a trial by jury: he uses "95 percent" of Darrow's actual summations and writings, speaks to a "jury" in the first few rows, and improvises when necessary.

"That's what an actor does," he says. "Tries to create the illusion of ‘the first time.'"

Simplicity, he observes, it the key to Darrow.

"Yes, trial lawyers have hubris, big egos," he says. "The great ones do. But the challenge is to not get swept away by it.

"The eloquence," he adds, comes in the simplicity."

"A Passion for Justice: The Clarence Darrow Story," runs through Oct. 19 at the Arts Barn, 311 Kent Square Road, Gaithersburg, at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets for Friday and Saturday are $25, $23 for Gaithersburg residents; $19, $17 for residents for Thursday and Sunday matinee s. Call 301-258-6394 or visit www.gaithersburgmd.gov.