Arguendo Is Full of Supremely Naughty Charm

Who knew Supreme Court justices have such complicated, libidinous inner lives? Anthony Kennedy muses on adults-only car washes. Sandra Day O'Connor contemplates pornographic videos. Antonin Scalia obsesses over nude opera. These racy reveries appear in Arguendo, a verbatim theater piece from Elevator Repair Service at the Public Theater.

As in the celebrated Gatz, a seven-hour epic that included every word of The Great Gatsby, the troupe again stages a text in its entirety: the oral arguments of a 1991 First Amendment case centered on a statute requiring exotic dancers to wear G-strings. The court had to decide whether such dance constitutes expressive speech or merely lewdness for profit.

Joan Marcus

Details

By Elevator Repair ServiceThe Public Theater425 Lafayette Street212-967-7555, publictheater.org

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More About

• U.S. Supreme Court
• Sandra Day O'Connor
• Antonin Scalia
• U.S. Courts
• Theatrical Plays

This is a cheeky subject for any theater company working to reconcile art and ticket sales. The arguments presented by the five-member cast are funny, weird, and deeply dull, so director John Collins gooses the action with swivel-chair dance routines and an eye-searing striptease, while designer Ben Rubin's projections take a dizzyingly kinetic approach to precedent. If this piece lacks the sneaky pathos of ERS's best work, it has a naughty charm, happy to reduce the highest court in the land to a series of dirty jokes.