(I didn’t crawl out of bed in the magnificently grand manner that this preeminent indie-rock-ballad might suggest, but my first full day in Manhattan began regardless. Insert May 31, 2008 Pt. I. 1. “Wake Up” – The Arcade Fire).Hastily throwing on a dress shirt and some chords, I walked out of my rather, uh, cozy hotel room at the Paramount ready to face a waning morning drizzle. Objective: get tickets for a Broadway matinee. There are a number of options when it comes to acquiring a pair of prime seats for a play on the Great White Way: you can order them online through Telecharge or similar and pay a convenience charge, you can call the box-office directly and pay full price, you can stand in a ridiculously long line for discount tickets at the TKTS ticket booth where you can’t choose your seat, you can hope to god or whomever that some guy is bumming tickets outside the theater before the show not knowing how legitimate the tickets are, you can get discounts by subscribing to online sites like Theatermania or Playbill… OR you can be like me. (Feeling like a hustler, here’s some love from Queens. It’s definitely appropriate. 2. “N.Y. State of Mind” – Nas).
Setting aside some unmerited arrogance, I will disclose that I had to learn this secret like everyone else – someone told me (my professor, obviously). Lucky for you, I’m willing to share the key to my ticket-procuring success. I present you with a not-so-funny, not-so-cryptic “Wheal of Fortune” puzzle: ST_D_NT T_CK_TS. Okay, now all you have left on the board are vowels, so you can’t spin the wheal again, even though it looks like oh-so much fun. Would you like to solve the puzzle, dufus? Congratulations! You’re moving on to the final round where you’ll get to play for a chance to win this beautiful 1980s Buick! In addition to the pocket change you’ve already garnered! Most of which you’ll lose to the government in taxes! Right after these ten thousand commercials! (That was weird. I don’t even like “Wheal of Fortune.” 3. “The Winner Is” – Devotchka).
A Saturday Matinee – The focus of this particular SURF post
Anyway, I was able to go to the box-office at the Booth Theater on 44th and get two, twenty-five dollar student tickets. Yep, just twenty-five dollars for, and here’s the kicker, front row seats. Only a few people are aware of the student rush. Quality house seats are given to students with an ID at a tremendous discount as soon as the box-office opens, which is usually at 10 AM. Well, as they say, now you know.The show started at two and I hadn’t had breakfast. Feeling a strong sense of independence coupled with a keen awareness of how alone I was, I ventured to another hidden gem of Mid-town. My professor had made me previously aware of this secret as well, but I was eager to try it out. The Café Edison is this little diner tucked into the side of The Hotel Edison. I know New York is famous for its diners, but finding an authentic one right on Times Square that’s not filled with a ton of tourists is hard. Plus, it has a cheap menu with some incredible breakfast food – two determining factors in my frequent visits. After a pair of poached eggs on hash, some toast with jam and butter, a couple cups of coffee, a glass of O.J. (Breakfast music. 4. “Orange Juice” – Grand Archives), and only ten bucks spent, I went back to the hotel to grab my camera.
Having fueled up with a Green Tea Frappuccino and having had a quick pre-show chat with David, I snapped a few shots of the crowd outside of THURGOOD. The audience for this limited-engagement production was quite diverse. It is evident, and not with just this show, that Broadway is certainly not rampant with the yuppies – the audience that it is often accused of attracting exclusively. Thurgood, a one man, one act play starring Lawrence Fishburne is a new biographical piece about the late, great Judge Thurgood Marshall. It follows that a show featuring a famous black actor about a historically prominent black man would attract a, well, black audience (Can you guess which word the title of the next song will have in it? 5. “Black Like Me” – Spoon). David’s studies often focus on the minority presence in the performing arts, bringing issues like race out of the margins in discussions about theater culture and theater audiences. While a historical play like Thurgood does align with his academic interests, the subject matter also sounds a bit tedious and it was, to be honest. However, his interests peaked upon noticing one particularly important audience member that afternoon: the illustrious Ruby Dee – renowned and respected as one of the most important female African American actors, writers, and activists ever to grace the public eye. While this shed light on how potentially significant Thurgood is to the black community, I, of course, was embarrassingly ignorant as to whom she is. (I’m a dumbass. 6. “Ignorant Shit” – Jay-Z).
After the curtain dropped on Fishburne’s performance, I was all at once blown away and intellectually overstuffed. In other words, Mr. Fishburne completely owned the role and convinced me whole-heartedly that he was no longer just Morpheus from The Matrix (I told you I was ignorant), but for an hour he truly was, to me, Thurgood Marshall. On the other hand, to use the words of my professor, it felt like Black History Month with all of that factual recounting. First things first though, Lawrence Fishburne was amazing. To talk for an hour is hard, heck, to read out loud for an hour is hard, but to become a completely different person – to act, to emote, to control the stage – for a whole ninety minutes without a break, that is an incredible accomplishment. The difficulty of that monumental task aside, Lawrence Fishburne successfully captures his character. He was able to make me believe that I was actually watching Thurgood Marshall tell his own story. It was such an engaging performance – full of emotion, humor, intensity and subtlety. Espousing and reciting an entire script effortlessly, it needs to be said that Lawrence Fishburne was, again, amazing. (If there was a song called ‘Stupendous Fucking Actor’ it would go here. 7. “Method Acting” – Bright Eyes).
In terms of the content of the play, Thurgood felt a bit too polished and a bit too concerned with the historical significance of this man’s life. I didn’t need a Broadway show to tell me what I could have found on Wikipedia. Granted, the way in which Mr. Marshall’s story is presented is rather absorbing, that is, if you appreciate a bedtime story about your grandfather’s younger years. I mean that in the best sense. Thurgood’s first-person narrative is not boring, or without flair. Indeed, the call for more complicated content is not an intentionally negative complaint of this review; rather, it is a lament for something further. There could have been a greater depth to the story. As David pointed out, there were some less-than-respectable aspects to the judge’s life, such as his notorious misogyny. The play often glossed over the not-so-remarkable and more human parts of both who Thurgood Marshall was and what he did. He was actually a controversial figure, but we never completely see that. Thus, we got a rather one-dimensional hero’s tale. Although, there was a memorable moment when Mr. Fishburne invokes in his character an imagined and touching regret over not knowing his own wife’s condition after she died. However, this too painted Thurgood Marshall with an optimist’s brush. (Every once in a blue moon, you’ll find an absolutely perfect track for a themed mix. 8. “Black History Month” – Death From Above 1979).To sum things up, the show was a bit too tutorial, but it was a vehicle for a masterful performance. There were, however, some other noteworthy features. At the end of the play, the writing went a bit further with some present day political commentary. Perhaps an obvious attempt at relevance, predicting what Thurgood Marshall’s political reactions would be today proved to be an interesting end to the show (as opposed to what I feared – some melodramatic death on stage or something). The set, with the action taking place in the Howard University Law School Auditorium in Washington, D.C., only had a giant table, a couple of chairs and a lectern. The backdrop was a giant stone-like American flag onto which colors and images were projected, acting as both an intriguing variable to an intentionally one note show and as visual cues for Fishburne. Some recorded sounds also provided cues, but these too were welcomed additions to the story, often enhancing the performance. The Booth Theater, a more intimate space, was a good fit for a show of its size. Fishburne added to this intimacy by directly engaging the audience every now and again. For instance, when the late comers were seated, he used a meta “to the furnace” joke (the joke became overplayed later), which seemed improvised, but it worked on a couple levels. It was effective in forming an exclusive bond with the majority of the audience that had arrived at the start of the show, since the latecomers had no idea why people were laughing. The repeated joke also sounded exactly like something Mr. Marshall would presumably say. Fishburne reacted to accidental cell phone noise in a very nuanced way as well. Without doubt, the man can perform. (“That is the end of that.” 9. “Time Honored Tradition” – Kaiser Chiefs).
The thesis of Thurgood is that Mr. Marshall’s story is, at the very least, important and worth knowing. Indeed, the show convinced me of just that.
Of course this Saturday on Broadway is far from over. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed up to Lincoln Center to get some tickets for a show that you still can’t get advanced tickets for (no, not even student tickets). So, while you try to work out that paradox. I leave you with the last track for May 31, 2008 Pt. I. (10. “Is This It” – The Strokes)
Next time on The Audio Phile: Judgment Night / “A Cliché Coming True!”
1. “Wake Up” – The Arcade Fire
2. “N.Y. State of Mind” – Nas
3. “The Winner Is” – Devotchka
4. “Orange Juice” – Grand Archives
5. “Black Like Me” – Spoon
6. “Ignorant Shit” – Jay-Z
7. “Method Acting” – Bright Eyes
8. “Black History Month” – Death From Above 1979
9. “Time Honored Tradition” – Kaiser Chiefs
10. “Is This It” – The Strokes
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