Winning portrait of a politician (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday, July 29, 2000

Just in time for the Republican National Convention comes a play about a politician. To be sure, Sen. John C. Stennis, the subject of A Gentleman From Mississippi, was a Democrat. But he was also a tradition-revering conservative, so it's reasonable to surmise, as the producers of this new piece at the Acting Studio obviously have, that he might appeal to many of that other party.

But why a play about John C. Stennis at all? Although Stennis was well-known during his four-decade tenure (1947-88) for his personal rectitude and unstinting support of military spending - as well as for his strong opposition to civil rights legislation - he has been pretty much forgotten.

Stennis died in 1995. If he is remembered anywhere, it is in Mississippi, and indeed David Dallas, who wrote and performs the show, is a Mississippi native, though he now acts and writes in Philadelphia. However, the fact that he and Stennis are from the same state is not what inspired him to write the show - and it certainly isn't what makes it an engaging, very human portrait of a politician.

Early in the last decade, Dallas was a graduate student in public policy and administration at Mississippi State University. Stennis, the university's most famous graduate, was then about 90. Frail and wheelchair bound (he had lost a leg to cancer), he needed assistance, and Dallas and another graduate student were assigned to care for him.

In his show, Dallas plays three characters: himself, talking about his experiences with the aged senator; the elderly Stennis both interacting with Dallas the caretaker and reminiscing about his life and years in the Senate; and the senator in full career delivering excerpts of speeches he made and commenting on issues of his time.

It's an interesting mix of circumstances that makes the piece a refreshingly different variation on the standard one-person theatrical autobiography, in which the subject tells the audience about himself or herself. In fact, the liveliest and most winning sections of this inventively organized piece are those in which Dallas, who does nothing to conceal his affection for the old man, tells humorous and touching stories about his relationship with the elderly Stennis, who comes across as an engrossing mixture of amiability and cantankerousness.

Under the direction of Rico Rosetti, Dallas sets up these anecdotes speaking as himself. Then, slipping into a wheelchair and donning a pair of glasses, he transforms himself into Stennis to take his part in the story . The spectacles and an elderly-sounding voice with a strong Southern accent are all the youthful-looking Dallas needs to convincingly suggest a man many decades older.

In this mode Stennis/Dallas talks about his career and the issues that concerned him in the Senate. Although Dallas makes it vivid enough in the telling, there are an awful lot of obscure dropped names from the past, and even more about Stennis' not always dramatic involvement in the politics of such events as the Vietnam War.

Still, at appropriate moments, Dallas gets out of the wheelchair to become a vigorous Stennis in his prime, speaking, often quite eloquently, about such subjects as Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (Stennis was the first Democratic senator to denounce his mud-slinging tactics), the danger of sliding into conflict in Indochina (from a prescient speech delivered in 19S4), and the need to support the military.

As might be expected of a senator from the deep South at that time, Stennis was a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation. Dallas has his character make the typical Southern politician's explanation that he believed that change in this area had to come from the people themselves and not be imposed by the federal government. But his Stennis avoids going into political detail about just how he and other Southern senators used everything in their power to obstruct civil rights legislation. The result is that Stennis comes off looking less racist than he might in a more objective assessment of his senatorial career.

Jane Caplan, a producer of the show, told the audience at a preview Wednesday that she had invited the Mississippi delegation to the GOP convention to see A Gentleman From Mississippi. If they come, they will be a particularly empathetic audience but, despite an overload of detail about decades-old political events, there is much in this well-made, nicely acted entertainment for anyone to appreciate and enjoy.

Written by Douglas Keating