Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood Marshall. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
One-man show dramatizes history in an entertaining way
By Ed Rampell
It’s ironic that I saw Thurgood -- starring Laurence Fishburne as the civil rights titan and first Black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall -- in an L.A. theater on July 8. Not only because the next day Predators, the action pic co-starring Fishburne opened, but because that Thursday night a jury in an L.A. courthouse found Oakland police officer Johannes Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter (instead of second degree murder) for shooting to death an unarmed Black youth, Oscar Grant. This was precisely the type of case that motivated Marshall to defend the defenseless, in particular blacks victimized by lynching and the state’s law enforcement apparatus (sometimes, alas, one and the same thing). There were 89 lynchings in 1908, the year Marshall was born.
Written by George Stevens, Jr., Thurgood is a perfect specimen of the one-man show format, with all the right ingredients. First of all, there’s a great story to be told, and Stevens’ script does so in a manner worthy of its subject matter, including: Marshall’s lifelong campaign for equal rights; dramatic courtroom clashes culminating with his triumph in 1954’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case; and Marshall’s ultimate appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. A gallery of historic characters figure in this tantalizing tale: Poet Langston Hughes, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Martin Luther King, JFK, LBJ, etc. The story is also enacted by a first rate actor, who convincingly ages onstage as he brings the legendary legal eagle to life and we follow Marshall from his youth in Baltimore to his senior citizenship on and off the bench. Fishburne, who starred in 1995’s Othello and the Matrix movies, has come a long way since he machine-gunned Vietnamese as a callow stoned youth in 1979’s Apocalypse Now.
The play’s backdrop is a huge American flag, reminiscent of Jasper Johns’ version, except this Old Glory is all white, allowing various images to be cinematically projected upon it, such as of the Supreme Court in Washington. In addition to Elaine McCarthy’s projection design, Ryan Rumery’s sound design adds to the drama’s overall effect, with various sound effects and recordings. Brian Nason’s lighting is also evocative of the piece’s myriad moods that move from jubilation to fear in this production deftly directed by Leonard Foglia.
Fishburne, who received Tony nomination for his Broadway depiction of Marshall, portrays the man as an irascible courtroom gladiator and crusader with personal quirks -- there are hints of a fondness for liquor and out-of-wedlock peccadilloes. His family had a predilection for unusual names (including an uncle named “Fearless”) and, as Thurgood (short for “Thoroughgood”) admits, for “stubbornness” -- a trait, by and by, that stood him and the cause of social justice in good stead over time. All in all, the mythic Marshall who did so much to overturn Jim Crow was all too human -- in all senses of the term.
The play’s incisive and insightful script delves into Marshall’s legal philosophy: That “the law is a weapon” and the U.S. Constitution, with its promise of “equal justice under law,” should be used to smash American apartheid. As such Marshall disapproved of the now sanctified Dr. King, whom, we should remember, was an outlaw advocating breaking unjust laws. When Rev. King champions Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” Marshall wryly reminds his friend that Thoreau wrote this essay while he was in a prison cell (one of this drama’s many humorous moments). If Marshall’s battlefield was the courthouse, King’s was the streets; to each their venue.
The playwright and his actor successfully dramatize history, making it highly entertaining. For instance, the audience is reminded about the struggles of the NAACP (Marshall long served this venerable civil rights organization as an attorney for years), and of the irony that Earl Warren -- who, as California’s attorney general during WWII, played a despicable role in the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry -- eventually played such a major role in desegregating America as Chief Justice of the liberal so-called “Warren Court” that ruled unanimously against segregation in the Brown v. Board case. (Perhaps Warren was trying to atone for his internment sins?) And so on.
My one quibble with the play is that it does not mention that Thurgood’s second wife, Cecilia, was born in Maui and the daughter of Filipino parents. Perhaps it was considered to be politically incorrect to point out that Thurgood’s wife was not Black? But Marshall was, after all, a fighter for integration, and his marrying a woman from Hawaii would be in character. I would have liked to learn more about “Sissy,” who is still alive, but this is a minor point about a major drama that was on Broadway a year ago.
Thurgood runs through Aug. 8 at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310/208-5454; for more info: http://www.geffenplayhouse.com/
