“The Originalist” Puts Justice Antonin Scalia on Center Stage

On Sunday I had the interesting opportunity to be in the audience for the third performance of a new play, The Originalist, at Arena Stage in Washington D.C.  Playwright John Strand has given Justice Antonin Scalia center stage and the spotlight for close to two hours, in a play filled with opera, literary references, plenty of legal humor, a few card games, and lots of verbal boxing between the justice and his young, liberal “contra” clerk. 

The play makes deft use of Scalia’s own words, drawn from opinions and public presentations, and actor Edward Gero wears the robes — and wields Scalia’s weapons — with authority. Kerry Warren, holds her ground well, both as actress and antagonist in the role of the law clerk.  The play concludes in the recent past, as Justice Scalia debates with the clerk the words he will announce from the bench for his dissent on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, United States v. Windsor. 

The play succeeds especially well in an important goal of the playwright, as identified in a lively post-production Q & A session with the audience. The play encourages serious discussion of what it means to “interpret” the Constitution. Through the voice of the clerk, it also asks whether there is any room for true solutions to emerge in the polarized world of left-right politics. 

The Originalist also proved to be surprisingly relevant to themes in this Blog. Scalia is depicted as the aging lion in winter, given to occasional moments of introspection and an intriguing episode of pique (hint: what career aspiration may he have pondered?). At one point he is seen as attempting to justify his intransigence with the observation that he’s growing old, a condition for which there is “no cure.”

The play — set in the intimate black box space of the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle — is scheduled to run until April 26.