Deliberations of the Cross: Passion Play and The Originalist, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
It's a strong week for theatre here in our Nation's Capitol. My reviews of The Originalist, Arena Stage playwright-in-residence John Strand's much-awaited play about Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and United States v. Windsor, and Forum Theatre's magnificent production of Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play, are in today's Washington City Paper. Go read 'em. Please.
I did mention in my draft how similar The Originalist is to Red – the John Logan-penned Arena Stage show from 2012 wherein Originalist star Ed Gero played a different colossal American, the painter Mark Rothko, yelling at a young assistant haunted by a parental tragedy. But I only get one page in the paper, so something had to go.
FURTHER READING: My 2010 review of the prior play I saw about a Supreme Court Justice, wherein Laurence Fishburne played Thurgood Marshall, whose tenure on the court overlapped with Scalia's from Sept. 1986 to Oct. 1991. And United States v. Windsor, in its game-changing entirety.