{"id":24606,"date":"2017-01-26T19:30:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T02:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=24606"},"modified":"2017-01-29T22:32:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T05:32:06","slug":"thurgood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2017\/01\/thurgood\/","title":{"rendered":"Thurgood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Play (2006)
\nby George Stevens, Jr.<\/p>\n

Directed by Benny Sato Ambush<\/p>\n

New Repertory Theatre<\/a>
\nArsenal Center for the Arts
\nWatertown, MA
\nJanuary 7 – February 9, 2017<\/p>\n

Featuring Johnny Lee Davenport as Thurgood Marshall<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Thurgood
Thurgood Marshall, 1967<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A gripping portrait of the late great Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, with a tour de force solo performance by Johnny Lee Davenport.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was the first African-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court. It was 1967 and Lyndon Johnson was president; Johnson had already tapped Marshall to be Solicitor General earlier in his term. Marshall served on the high court for twenty-four years, retiring in 1991, distinguishing himself as a jurist who supported liberal positions, notably abortion rights and opposition to the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Before he became a judge, Marshall was an attorney for the NAACP and in 1954 earned his reputation by winning the landmark case Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka<\/em> which he argued before the Supreme Court. That victory overturned a precedent established by the case Plessy vs. Ferguson<\/em> (1896), which decreed that segregated schools conceived as separate but equal were constitutional. Marshall’s victory with Brown <\/em>was a sea-change in education and paved the way, over the coming decades, for enforcement of integrated schooling.<\/p>\n

Following a chronological scheme, this wonderfully written one-person play tells its story concisely and straightforwardly. Set, putatively, in a lecture hall at Howard University, the play is cast as a recounting by Marshall as an old man of his life and career. <\/p>\n

A simple array of pictures on the back wall of the small stage represents characters in Marshall’s life; as each character is invoked, a small spotlight is shone on the portrait in question.<\/p>\n

\"Davenport
Johnny Lee Davenport as Thurgood Marshall
Photo: Andrew Brilliant \/ Brilliant Pictures
Courtesy of New Repertory Theatre<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is both considerable detail and considerable humor in the rendition, and Johnny Lee Davenport does a great job of managing the considerable body of details and narratives; as well, he gives a warm and engaging portrait of Marshall himself. It’s an amazingly compelling performance.<\/p>\n

The portrait drawn is of someone incredibly hard-working, astute and authoritative who, in addition, exhibits a good amount of humility and vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Accounts of his two marriages – Marshall’s first wife died of cancer in her forties – are beautifully presented, filling out a humane sense of Marshall as a partner and family man.<\/p>\n

As the character humorously but categorically relates, he was originally given the name Thoroughgood, which, as a youngster he found too cumbersome, so he shortened it. This small anecdote stuck in the midst of the narrative demonstrates briefly but eloquently some of the resolve and self-possession of the man who would later become of of America’s great jurists.<\/p>\n

The description of how Marshall was instructed by his father to defend himself forcefully against anyone who dared call him by a derogatory racial slur is artfully rendered. And it is humorously amplified when Marshall describes working as a waiter and is called such a name by one of the clients who also tips him heavily. His subsequent wrestling with the question of honor vs. practicality forms a poignant, somewhat humorous, corollary to the paternal guidelines, and sets a tone for understanding how Marshall’s greatness derived from ardent sense of rightness that found expression through a sense of practicality and astuteness.<\/p>\n

The play’s account of LBJ and his “negotiation” with Marshall about becoming a Supreme Court justice is vivid and Davenport does a fabulous job of embodying LBJ as well as Marshall. <\/p>\n

Johnny Lee Davenport has distinguished himself in many roles on Boston stages over the years, and his work in Thurgood<\/em> offers a notable distillation of the capacities he has exhibited so effectively elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Benny Sato Ambush, who directs the show, has offered, in conjunction with Johnny Lee Davenport’s masterful portrayal, a delicacy of dramatic and narrative depiction. Ambush directed last spring’s fabulous production of Lettice and Lovage<\/a> at the Gloucester Stage Company, also very funny, touching and deftly rendered.<\/p>\n

This account of Marshall, a notably articulate and thoughtful jurist and an honorable man, is a most welcome contribution in the darkness of this winter season, and the vivid and moving rendition given by Johnny Lee Davenport a wonderfully warm reminder of the inspiration offered by a great American whose striking accomplishments did not diminish his humanity nor his humility.<\/p>\n

– BADMan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Play (2006)
\nby George Stevens, Jr.
\nDirected by Benny Sato Ambush
\nNew Repertory Theatre<\/a>
\nArsenal Center for the Arts
\nWatertown, MA
\nJanuary 7 – February 9, 2017
\nFeaturing Johnny Lee Davenport as
\nThurgood Marshall<\/strong>
\nA gripping portrait of the late great Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, with a tour de force solo performance by Johnny Lee Davenport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-plays","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24606"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24628,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606\/revisions\/24628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}