Sisters in Law looks at the volatile relationship between the first two female Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Tovah Feldshuh) and Sandra Day O’Connor (Stephanie Faracy). The play by Jonathan Shapiro, which is now running at The Wallis, is a kind of feminist manifesto. Ginsburg and O’Connor may have had their differences but they both managed to stand together when it came to the issue of equal rights for women. The two of them were natural antagonists. O’Connor was blonde, Gentile and peppy. Born and raised in Arizona, she was a lifelong Republican with strongly conservative values—and lots of political friends who eased her way up the legal ranks. Ginsburg, on the other hand, was a Jewish girl from Brooklyn who was poor, brainy, and liberal. She had to fight her way into the Ivy League, rising to the top of her law class, only to be rejected later by mainstream law firms because of her religion. She kept scrapping though and eventually became a leading civil-rights attorney whose brilliance could not be denied. She was soon tapped to join her idol O’Connor on the bench of the Supreme Court. Much of Ginsburg’s story is familiar to us, thanks to the two recent films on her. What’s new about the play is her behind-the-scenes interaction with O’Connor. Despite her admiration for the pioneering justice—breaking into the all-male Supreme Court was no small feat—Ginsburg was often infuriated by her friend’s right-wing views on certain key issues (like abortion). O’Connor also sometimes felt the same way about Ginsburg, accusing her of being too liberal—and too impatient for change in the laws of the land. “You’re going too fast and too hard,” she tells her. “You’re asking to be slapped down by the rest of the justices.” Ginsburg was also greatly peeved when O’Connor suddenly decided to resign from the bench, choosing to go back to Arizona to care for her Alzheimer-stricken husband. This left Ginsburg in a weakened legal position at a time when important civil-rights cases were coming before the court. Sisters in Law allows us to eavesdrop on the inside talk between Ginsburg and O’Connor—and to hear them gossip about some of their fellow justices like Thomas and Alioto. Some of their catty remarks are juicy and allow the playwright to inject a little humor into the text, which is shot through with legal arguments. Also, the time-span here is wide, making for a large number of short, staccato-like scenes (greatly enabled, though, by Rachel Myers’s clever, swift-changing set). Feldshuh and Faracy excel in their roles as warring justices whose friendship—make that love for each other—is a rare and touching thing.
