“Thurgood” was the production in Geva’s season I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. The one-man play, by George Stevens, Jr., focuses primarily on Thurgood Marshall’s accomplishments leading up to his being appointed to the Supreme Court. Lester Purry, as directed by Lou Bellamy, carries the almost 2-hour show (plus an intermission) seamlessly, and encourages audience input and applause at appropriate moments (a different audience demographic might need less encouragement, but alas, today’s traditional theatre audience has been trained to respect the fourth wall, and it’s hard to break through, even when invited). I was riveted.
Charles Isherwood’s New York Times review of the 2008 Broadway production was polite, but less than enthusiastic, calling the play “essentially an opportunity to watch a movie star deliver a history lecture” and a “superficially dry evening of theater.” He commented about the play through the lens of then-current events: “the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama putting a renewed focus on the legacy of racism, as it is viewed by Americans both black and white, the play serves as a healthy reminder that separate drinking fountains, to cite one shameful practice, are just a generation or two in the past.”
Unfortunately, Americans continue to need these history lectures, especially as the dark underbelly of racism and hatred has been returned to the light by our current President. MAGA is a blatant nod to the era of white supremacy that his supporters want to return to. A passage late in the play “serve(s) as a stark reminder of how radically the court evolves over the years as its makeup changes.” And this was before the Republican Party hijacked the nomination of Justice Scalia’s replacement and then threw out all future attempts at bipartisanship by changing the number of votes needed to confirm a Supreme Court judge (to be fair, the Democrats aren't blameless - they went "nuclear" for other nominees several years earlier). Only time will tell if Democrats are rightly afraid of the regressive potential Kavenaugh’s recent divisive appointment provides.
There were many moving moments during the play, but perhaps the most moving came at the end, when the play quotes lines of the Langston Hughes’ poem “Let America Be America Again.” Not surprisingly, my high school AmLit class didn’t include this poet, so I googled it to read it in its entirety: READ HERE. Wow.
Kudos to Geva for giving us this play this season. The fact that this story of racism still resonates makes me wonder if, sadly, there will never be a time when it does not.
“Thurgood” runs through November 18. More info at: www.geva.org
No comments:
Post a Comment