Two Icons on the Los Angeles Stage (07/10)

The two hottest tickets in town are also educational and entertaining.

Supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall and superstar sopranoMaria Callas, the two thoroughly entertaining legends currently portrayed on local stages in Thurgood and in Master Class, are strong reminders of the particularly American  originality, smarts, drive and sense of humor that can accompany the road from obscurity to icon:

Multiple acting award-winner Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood already drew multiple awards plus sold-out audiences in Washington, D.C..  In George Stevens, Jr’s one-man “bioplay”  under  Leonard Foglia’s direction, he transforms himself from the Baltimore boy at the wrong end of the tracks (the “Smith & Wesson line” as he chuckles) into the history-changing supreme court justice at the other end of that line in the nation’s capitol.

Telling his life story, Fishbourne leads the audience through remarkably engaging and clear accounts of his complex landmark 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education, that essentially ended school segregation and the amusing story of how he become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice appointed by LBJ.

 

Thurgood’s philosophy was that “the law exists for everyone, or at least for everyone who learns how to use it.”   To this end, our hero also paints a verbal picture of the sordid alternative possibilities that await someone “from his station,” with easy street-wise banter that is the mark of the unique sassy, smart east coast Black man, banter that characterizes America’s leading radical as much as his intellectual genius and tenacity.  

 

Marshall credits his life path to his middle-class parents who encouraged education and individual thinking, and to his early introduction to the constitution.  Ever the nonconformist, when Thurgood got into trouble at school, his “punishment” was to memorize sections of the U.S. Constitution, later serving him well in court and providing one of the biggest laughs in the show.

As the least famous of the three leading black 20th century civil rights struggle activists along with pacifist Martin Luther King Jr. and firey Malcolm X, Thurgood reminds us that of the three it was Marshall, working through the courts, who had the most profound and lasting effect.

Still, Marshall’s own personal favorite case was in the telling and oh-so-recognizable human category of “success as the best revenge” when he sued the school that denied him admission to law school and won, overthrowing the 1898 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling in the process. 

Thurgood is at the Geffen Playhouse through August 8, 2010.  (www.geffenplayhouse.com).

Maria Callas (the venerable Ellen Geer looking a bit more like a sprightly Geraldine Chaplin than the dolorous Callas in the glorious Theatricum Botanicum sunlight) in Master Class by Terence McNally (1995) credits her a lifelong dedication to her voice, and rightfully so.  Born in 1923 in New York to Greek parents who divorced, the chubby “ugly duckling” sister  Maria followed her father to Greece when she was a teen-ager.

 

Callas changed opera forever by acting her parts, even shaving off one-third of her weight to look convincing in her roles and become a glamorous superstar.  The Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood recently featured an exhibit of her stunning, timeless costumes and clothes and a video bio.

 

"When you’re fat and ugly, you had better have a couple of high F’s you can interpolate into your life,” she calls out.  Diva Callas had more than a couple and used them frequently on a self- trained her voice and large repertoire at a young age, to the eventual ruination of her voice.  Her doomed love life described in interior monologues added heartbreak.

 

The two-act play, inspired by a popular series of master classes at the Juilliard School in 1971 attended by McNally, is peppered with acerbic and usually wickedly funny words of wisdom as Callas leads three young, aspiring singers through their paces. While the audience as class watches

Tenor Tony (Andreas Beckett) proves talented and unafraid while Sopranos Sophie (Elizabeth Tobias) and Sharon (Meaghan Boeing) are terrorized into singing with real feelings, and pianist Cody T. Gillette adds a beautiful backdrop. .  

My guest, opera singer Rita Burton, “had the pleasure herself of taking a master class by  Ellen Geer,” revealing beforehand how Geer had admonished students to “keep their hands at their sides.”  We all laughed when Callas did exactly the same on stage.

 

The playbill poses the question of whether Callas would have become as famous if she had been loved.  Synchronistically, Thurgood answers the question.  “Yes,” and probably for a much longer time. (www.theatricum.com).  Master Class, absolute perfection for the 2010  Theatricum theme of “yearning,” runs through September 25.