Thurgood

It is the seamless weaving of Marshall's personal biography with the story of his tenure as chief counsel for the N.A.A.C.P., where he worked to challenge the separate-but-equal doctrine used to justify racial segregation in the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, that keeps Thurgood a work of such enthralling theater and television.

It's just plain good--fast-paced, emotionally engaging and even transporting at times. Much of the credit goes to Fishburne's performance, but there other important factors, like the way in which Stevens' script captures Marshall's liberating sense of humor, and the rich look of the overall production.

Students of Marshall's life and times won't find any new information here, but the personal shadings are crucial because they humanize what might otherwise have been dry textbook details. Stevens and Fishburne find a strong emotional through-line for Marshall's greatest triumphs: the desire to right injustices visited upon Marshall, his family and his people.

While he can be matter-of-fact, bemused and self-deprecating, he never loses a sense of forcefulness, purpose and pride. As Fishburne obviously understands, the story requires no hand-waving or rhetorical embellishment.

Fishburne captures Marshall's larger-than-life qualities, and in his playwriting debut, Stevens endows his portrait with a ripe sense of humor.

Thurgood feels more "important" than dramatic. Part of it is Stevens' then-I-did-this structure, more focused on biographical bullet points than the flesh-and-blood human behind them. And part of it is Fishburne, who despite coiled power--his Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It" was Oscar-nominated--resonates here as a cool character rather than a fiery one.

It probably works better onstage, but Stevens should know that what you do to achieve suspension of disbelief in a theater is not what you do to convince an audience that what it is seeing in a film is real.