Before The Ford/Hill Project begins, you know how it ends. That’s the danger of verbatim theater (a production assembled using transcripts from courtroom testimony). But if it’s well done—and Ford/Hill, co-created by Elizabeth Marvel and Lee Sunday Evans, certainly is—it’s undeniably captivating.
Marvel—who also stars alongside Gabby Beans, Teagle Bougere, and Josh Hamilton in this Waterwell production at BAM Fisher’s intimate Fishman Space—and Evans have pieced together a drama from the strikingly similar Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, centered on the testimonies of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford.
If you’re old enough to remember Hill and the graphic details she was forced to give to the all-male Senate judiciary committee about Thomas’ speech and behavior in 1991, you likely experienced déjà vu listening to Ford in 2018. (At least there were four women on the latter 21-member committee. Progress!) But hearing both women’s words at the same time on the same stage—at one point, Hill’s and Ford’s opening statements are essentially spliced together—produces a gut reaction that a televised Congressional hearing could never elicit.
The men play various senators, then step into the roles of Thomas and Kavanaugh. Both are extraordinary well cast: The endlessly versatile Bougere (recently a wonderful Camillo in Shakespeare in the Park’s The Winter’s Tale) perfectly captures Thomas’ intelligence, indignation, and self-righteousness. Remember when he called the process “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks”? Hamilton, who has played the beer-loving judge in previous productions, plays up Kavanaugh’s frat-boy personality to great effect.
Marvel and Beans mostly play Ford and Hill, respectively—both are terrifically commanding—but also step into a few senators’ shoes when necessary. Marvel goes, appropriately, over-the-top as Lindsey Graham to re-create his histrionic defense of Kavanaugh: “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.” (Which is saying something, because at that point he’d been in Congress nearly 25 years.) And I had completely forgotten that Shakespeare was invoked in Hill’s hearing, when Senator Alan Simpson (played by Beans) commanded the courtroom to “Read Othello,” and quotes, among other lines “Who steals my purse, steals trash.… But he that filches from me my good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.” Did anyone realize those lines were spoken not by Othello, the Moor, but by Iago, and that Simpson was (presumably inadvertently) comparing Thomas to a racist villain?
For all of the upsetting recollections, ridiculous questions, and stomach-churning testimony (Hill mentions, more than once, that Thomas “spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals, and films showing group sex or rape scenes … pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or large breasts involved in various sex acts”), the most disturbing moment might be a completely wordless one: when the men put on their robes. They look at each other, then the audience, and walk around the stage peacock-proud before sitting in one of the nine empty chairs. You’ll note that in addition to the robes, each is wearing the smallest hint of self-satisfied smirk.
The Ford/Hill Project opened Sept. 8. 2026, and runs through Sept. 20 at BAM Fisher. Tickets and information: bam.org
