Thurgood

MARSHALL PLAN Fishburne works toward desegregation.

Laurence Fishburne makes a judicious return to the Broadway stage in Thurgood, a solo survey of the life and career of 20th-century legal giant Thurgood Marshall. It’s a worthy topic, but in this treatment of the liberal justice, most of the drama has been left on the bench. First-time playwright George Stevens Jr. is a veteran television writer, and he has diligently drawn a timeline of Marshall’s ascent to the judicial firmament: his college years, when his friends included the poet Langston Hughes; his seminal work fighting for black civil rights in the legal wing of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; his triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case; and finally his nomination as the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, where he served for 25 years.

This is solid material for a civics class or a History Channel documentary, but although director Leonard Foglia does his best to temper the monotony with projections and sound cues, the production never quite seems like a play. Fishburne turns in an eminently respectable and respectful performance, investing the judge with admirable humanity and twinkles of lusty humor. Yet despite occasional allusions to Marshall’s large appetite for liquor and women, the play is mainly a journey from court to court; you leave the Booth Theatre feeling educated about an important career but only marginally enlightened about the man behind it. One wishes that Stevens had devoted less time to Marshall’s public trials and more to his private tribulations.