The Eyes of the Law: Justice Ginsburg in Chinatown

Alas, Justice Ginsburg wasn’t spotted slurping down noodles at Tony Cheng’s. Rather, Her Honor was in D.C.’s Chinatown for a theater performance, which is more her speed. (She also loves the opera, of course.)

The Eyes of the Law celebrity sighting took place on Friday evening. Our eyewitness reports:

RBG spotted at the theater! It was opening night of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “Free for All” production of Twelfth Night at Sidney Harman Hall (yes, as in Rep. Jane Harman’s husband), across from the Verizon Center in D.C’s Chinatown.

The “Free for All” is an annual event in which the Company puts on a free Shakespeare show for Washington for a couple weeks in the summer.

Free theater is nice and all, but Justice Ginsburg doesn’t need handouts. She and her late husband, Martin Ginsburg, revealed assets worth as much as $45 million at the time of her most recent financial disclosure.

So, did our correspondent get to chat with Justice Ginsburg?

Yes, briefly. Even though SCOTUS members count as celebrities in Washington, RBG surprisingly wasn’t mobbed, which allowed our tipster to say hi:

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The Justice went mostly unnoticed, so far as I could tell, when she took a break from the theater into the hallway during intermission of the three-hour show. The presence of U.S. Marshals [or perhaps Supreme Court police officers] was the giveaway to me.

I saw the justice during intermission and quickly acknowledged her, to which she gave a kind hello. (Unfortunately, the show was about to begin again and she already was en route back to her seat, so there was no real chatting.)

That might be just as well. Although a brilliant legal mind, Justice Ginsburg isn’t known for excelling at small talk.

It appears, by the way, that RBG has a weakness for Twelfth Night. Last year she presided over a mock trial based on the facts of the play.

P.S. Random tidbit: Randy Harrison, aka Justin from Queer As Folk, plays Sebastian in this production of Twelfth Night. He discusses his theater work and his thoughts on the Washington theater scene in this recent Metro Weekly interview.

Shakespeare Free for All stages ‘Twelfth Night’ [Washington Post]
In Twelfth Night Mock Trial, Malvolio Loses [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

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