Canonizing the legacy of a popular political figure (particularly one so integral to certain period of time) is a genuinely dicey proposition, and can usually go one of two ways: to ignore the politics and preserve the figure, or to emphasize them and preserve the legacy. Thurgood walks a fine line between the two, taking time and effort to humanize its central figure before giving voice to his leftist views. By doing so, it avoids the pitfalls of feeling like a polemic for our modern era, but fails to give a complete portrait of its own.
Staged before an immense American flag (which doubles as a projection screen) and a long court table, Thurgood details the life of the first black Supreme Court justice in not-quite fastidious terms, starting with his boyhood in Maryland and leading fluidly up to his tenure at the Supreme Court. Appropriately, Laurence Fishburne treats the show more as an oration than as a performance, evoking the subject's courtroom experience even when discussing personal failures, which, much to Thurgood's credit, are not glossed over. Marshall's regret over his first marriage is particularly affecting; though Fishburne doesn't allow this burden to throw off the pace of the show, the emotion conveyed as he admits that he didn't know that his first wife 'Buster' was dying of cancer until the end was near is apparent.
The bulk of the show is naturally given to Marshall's greatest triumph, and one of the seminal points in twentieth century America: Brown versus the Board of Education, and the legal fight to end segregation that preceded the civil rights movement. Marshall was one of the (if not the) key figures in this period, to the degree that the outcome might have been substantially different had it not been for his involvement. His pride in his accomplishment is clear (and made all the more moving for his family's history so upended by slavery), and the stakes of his battles are given sufficient import, but Thurgood's greatest triumph is that it never lets the gravity of its backdrop overwhelm Marshall's personality. Throughout, Fishburne portrays him as a generous, big-hearted, good-humored individual, as sharp in his wit as his intuition, and unafraid of letting everyone know whether his sexual appetite was sated or not.
In the final moments of the show, Marshall speaks more directly to his politics than at any other point in the show; he speaks frankly of his differences with Nixon and Reagan, and of his unambiguous support for gun control. While one could obviously draw modern parallels with his statements, Thurgood never goes out of its way to lay down any challenges; there are no buzz phrases like "weapons of mass destruction" to pollute the discussion. It is also in these moments that the play breezes past what might have been a dramatic enough topic to support a play of its own: his differences with Martin Luther King Jr.
As contemporaries, the two were familiar, without ever becoming partners or even friends, but they were so philosophically opposed that they highlight larger questions and debates within the civil rights movement. Marshall believed that the way to liberation was in the law, both in its creation and in its enforcement, while King was a practitioner of civil disobedience. Their disagreements were rooted in debates as far back as those held by W.E.B. DuBois and George Washington Carver, but they are generally dismissed with a joke about how Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience while in prison. As enriching as Thurgood is, it only suggests how much more so a debate between the two figures might have been. In comparison, focusing on the larger conflict between black and white societies feels like a 'safer' choice when set against the internal conflicts of the black community. All too frequently, Black History Month (with which this release is no doubt meant to coincide) is treated as a parade of familiar portraits and dates rather than a complete picture of a dynamic culture independent of larger white culture. Had it done so, Thurgood might have been truly groundbreaking; as is, it will have to settle for being very good.
SPECIAL FEATURES
There are none.
"Thurgood" is on sale January 17, 2012 and is not rated. Theater. Directed by Michael Stevens. Written by George Stevens, Jr.. Starring Laurence Fishburne.
