Thurgood

One of my friends at work is a Broadway junkie. He invited Margo and me to go see a play with him and his wife, and casually mentioned that this would probably be their last play until the fall. "Oh?" I asked. "Well, its the 18th one we've seen since October, so we've pretty much covered everything."

The play we saw on Saturday night was "Thurgood," a one-man show starring Laurence Fishburne as former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. (What else would three lawyers go see on Broadway?) Fishburne was amazing--the show is 90 minutes with no intermission, and he essentially has a monologue for the whole time. The only interruptions are some short sound tracks to transition between themes (and probably help him out as cues). After he came back on stage for a second curtain call, he put up his hands for silence and then said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to ask you to do something for me. Tonight my father is in the audience," and he pointed to him up in the balcony. His dad got a standing ovation, too. You could tell that Laurence was emotional.

Afterwards we went across the street for some dessert, and who should walk in but the father. My friend is a very outgoing Greek, wanted to say "hello" (since the father walked right past our table twice), but his wife discouraged the idea.

My favorite line of the play was about LBJ. There was the idea that Johnson owed Marshall the open position on the Supreme Court, because Marshall had given up a life appointment to the 2d Circuit appellate court to become Solicitor General; but LBJ knew it would be difficult to get Marshall confirmed by the Senate, so he basically told Marshall not to get his hopes up. The very next day Marshall was summoned the White House and Johnson told him he was going to be nominated. LBJ asked Marshall if he had told his wife yet. Marshall was kind of surprised, and responded that he couldn't very well have told her, since he didn't know until just now when the President told him. "Well, let's get her on the speakerphone!" said Johnson, so Marshall called her up. When Marshall said "hello" to his wife, the first thing she said--while on speaker with the President--was "Did we get the Supreme Court nomination?!" LBJ roared.