Review - Thurgood & The Eccentricities of a Nightingale

There's little drama to be had in first-time playwright George Stevens, Jr's solo play, Thurgood, a textbook review of the career of civil rights attorney and eventual U.S. Supreme Court JustIce Thurgood Marshall. Set at the Howard University Law School Auditorium with The Playgoers serving as the title character's audience, the ninety minute piece offers a chronological telling of his personal history without much happening in the immediate present. It's a bit like watching a historical documentary of a familiar story with none of that great archival footage.

Luckily, it's a great story. A descendent of slaves whose interest in the law began when, as a child, he was punished for misbehaving by having to read the U.S. Constitution, Marshall's early work with the N.A.A.C.P. fighting legal battles against institutionalized discrimination led to his victory arguing the landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate, but equal" was unconstitutional. More than twenty years later, President Johnson appointed him as America's first black Supreme Court justice.

And even more luckily (luckilyer?) Laurence Fishburne gives a truly noteworthy performance in a role where it sometimes seems his acting chops aren't tested as much as his memorization skills. With a warm, dignified presence that commands attention while remaining a regular guy, Fishburne, directed by Leonard Foglia, is a skilled and ingratiating storyteller. He effectively presents Marshall as a humble man, with a rascally side, who can take pride in his achievements and his place in history while recognizing those who helped make them happen.

Photo of Laurence Fishburne by Carol Rosegg

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While Broadway audiences are getting a taste of Tennessee Williams' revised text for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Off-Off-Broadway's The Actors Company Theatre (T.A.C.T.) is treating New Yorkers to a rare production of a far more extreme overhaul.

By the time his 1948 drama Summer and Smoke, a philosophical battle of body vs. soul played out between spirited southern belle Alma Winemiller and the playboy next door, John Buchanan, Jr., closed after a disappointing three month run on Broadway, Williams was already reconsidering his characters and story. Though his new version of the play, re-titled The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, was finished by 1951, it was perhaps because Summer and Smoke unexpectedly became a huge Off-Broadway hit in a 1952 production directed by Jose Quintero, making a star out of Geraldine Page, that the new play wasn't published until 1964 and didn't reach Broadway until 1976, having only a third of the run of its predecessor. While Summer and Smoke is still fairly popular among regional theatres and has even had a Broadway revival, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale remains the play the author preferred and considered to be among his best efforts.

Director Jenn Thompson's beautifully acted production, the first in New York since its Broadway run, features a company that embraces the playwright's elevated language as conversational poetry. Still set sometime before World War I in the fictional town of Glorious Hill, Mississippi, the relationship between Alma and John still takes center stage, but in a completely new approach.

Alma is now a free-spirited artistic type, feeling stifled by the stuffiness of her surroundings. Nicknamed "the nightingale of the Delta" for her love of singing at public events, she's also committed to her literary salon gatherings and hopes to spread artistic appreciation all across the south. But her unusually animated way of expressing herself (we first see her loudly delighting in the Fourth of July fireworks, then claiming in a panic to have gone blind from their brightness), her sing-songy speech pattern and an assortment of aggressive eccentricities keeps the locals at a respectful distance. At first it seems that actress Mary Bacon may be overdoing Alma's affectations a bit, especially for the intimate Clurman Theatre, but Williams makes it clear through the way others describe her that an extreme performance is exactly what is desired. She is a bit of an oddity, but Bacon finds what makes her a tragic and empathetic figure.

John Buchanan, Jr. is still the young doctor next door that Alma has been lovesick over since childhood, but the new script changes him from playboy to mama's boy. If not romantically attracted to Alma, he is fascinated by her uniqueness, perhaps even more so because of his domineering mother's disapproval of her eccentric neighbor. While Todd Gearhart plays John with a sweet, simple appeal, his role seems severely underwritten compared with his leading lady's and it's not until a scene near the finish, where Alma takes him to a rent-by-the-hour hotel, ready to settle for the briefest moment of intimacy, that the two become interesting as a pair.

A fine supporting cast is headed by Larry Keith as Alma's stern minister father and Darrie Lawrence as John's mother, each playing their roles with a controlling manner that comes out of parental concern.

I'll leave it to the Tennessee Williams scholars to discuss their preferences of one play over the other, but either way T.A.C.T.'s production of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale offers a rich and satisfying look at a rarely seen work of one of America's greats.