Ketanji Brown Jackson Goes Broadway

Why choose tragic love, when self-aggrandizement is still an option? The Supreme Court Justice acts out the answer in a cheery agitprop romp

From NPR today:

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her Broadway debut this weekend. She also made history as the first member of the nation’s highest court to grace its storied stage, according to the production that invited her.

Jackson appeared in a one-night-only walk-on role on Saturday night in the Tony-nominated romantic comedy musical “& Juliet,” a modern take on Shakespeare's tragedy that imagines what would have happened if the female protagonist survived and took control of her own life.

If you’ve been on social media today, you’ve probably seen the clip:

Justice Brown Jackson in the above clip looks like she’s just having fun. Who can hate that? If I reached the high court I’d ask to play drums for Weird Al. I certainly can’t hate a gay Romeo and Juliet (it’s Broadway!) or even a trans one. As Kurt Vonnegut once said about critics, it’d be like putting on a suit of armor to attack a hot fudge sundae. Why bother?

But the clip didn’t tell us much about the context of Brown Jackson’s lines, so I looked it up. OH MY GOD. If Pol Pot spoofed Jesus Christ Superstar it wouldn’t reach this universe of unintentional comedy. & Juliet is the ultimate in woke art: a campy satire where the cast spends spends two and a half hours leaping in costumed joy while they retroactively cancel that infamous heteronormative icon, William Shakespeare.

Future audiences will either cherish this musical or be baffled by it, maybe both, but Brown Jackson just did humanity a great service by giving it a chance at immortality. I know there are more serious matters in the world today (including rumors of a loose nuke under my house), and I get the original release was two years ago, but & Juliet is too funny not to recap in brief: