| . | 05/03/2008
Thurgood
By: Victor Gluck
Laurence Fishburne as Marshall Thurgood
(photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
Every once in a while the appropriate actor meets the right historical personage in a one person show and theater magic is made. Examples in recent memory include Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson and James Earl Jones as Paul Robeson. To this list, we can now add Laurence Fishburne as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In the hands of Fishburne, not seen on Broadway since 1999, Thurgood, a new one man play by George Stevens, Jr., is both absorbing and exhilarating. Marshall’s story, from poverty to the Supreme Court, is fascinating, and as both men have charisma to spare the retelling of this journey makes riveting theater. At the end of Thurgood, one comes out uplifted and proud to be a member of the human race.
Although Thurgood is Stevens’ first play, this is not the first time that he has dramatized this story. His interest began with his writing and directing the 1991 television docudrama, Separate But Equal, the story of Marshall’s involvement in the court challenge to Plessy vs. Ferguson in Brown vs. Board of Education which destroyed the legal validity to racial segregation. The premise of the play is that on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Marshall’s graduation from Howard University Law School, Washington, D.C., he returns to address the students in 1983. Entering the stage heavily leaning on a cane, Fishburne as Marshall becomes visibly younger before our eyes as he recounts his early experiences and his career. By the play’s end, he has returned to his age of 75. Fishburne also depicts various people from his career so well that we feel we have met them.
Allen Moyer’s setting with its long wooden table and podium is backed by a large white stucco American flag in the style of Jasper Johns on which slides of historic events as well as various courtrooms are projected. Fishburne takes us through Marshall’s career that led him from segregated Baltimore where he had to sit in the back of the bus and use separate drinking fountains, to becoming the first African American elevated to the Supreme Court in 1967. He both relates anecdotes as well as recreates court cases that proved to be seminal decisions in the history of American civil rights.
We learn about the Marshall family penchant for unusual names like Fearless and Thoroughgood, and Thurgood’s high school punishment that led to his memorizing the United States Constitution. Rejected from the University of Maryland Law School on the basis of “separate but equal,” he vowed to bring down the 1898 Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling which made it possible. Attending the Howard University Law School, he fell under the spell of its dynamic dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who taught him that “the law is a weapon.” Together they successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit an Amherst University graduate.
Marshall eventually follows Houston to New York as Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and is chosen to plead the landmark 1954 case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court. This eventually led to Marshall’s appointment to the Second Court of Appeals in 1961, U.S. Solicitor General in 1965 and ultimately, the Supreme Court in 1967. Piloted by the subtle and understated direction of Leonard Foglia, Fishburne is both charming and eloquent. He not only recounts the events of Marshall’s career, but creates suspense as he agonizes over how each now famous case will turn out. He also brings to life such people as his mentor Houston; General Douglas MacArthur who did nothing to alleviate segregation in the U.S. Army; his legal nemesis, segregationist John W. Davis; and his clear-headed first wife Vivian Burey whom he met at college.
What may be most memorable about Thurgood is that in telling the story of this remarkable man we are also given the uplifting history of the civil rights movement in the U.S. during the twentieth century.
Laurence Fishburne, last seen on Broadway as King Henry II in The Lion in Winter, brings Thurgood Marshall vibrantly to life, recreating his determination and integrity, as well as his sense of humor, fears and doubts. Ending Marshall’s story with a quote from Lincoln University classmate Langston Hughes (“Let America be America again”), he reminds us that much has been accomplished, but there is much left to be done.
Thurgood (through July 20)
Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com
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