Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sits in the audience at "Quando ce ne sono nove (When There Are Nine): A Night at the Opera with Ruth Bader Ginsburg," at the New York City Bar Association on Wednesday, Feb. 5. She is joined by, from right, Robert Katzmann, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Justice Ginsburg's granddaughter, Clara Spera, and Clara's husband, Rory Boyd. Photo credit: Philip Furgang

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—and nine actors portraying her—took center stage at the New York City Bar Association's biannual comedy show Wednesday night.

Drawing from influences as diverse as French composer Georges Bizet and the rapper Biggie Smalls, a cast of lawyers doubled as dancers, opera singers and musicians to put on a show that celebrated the jurist's accomplishments and her recent rise to become a pop-culture icon.

While the actors acknowledged on stage that it could be a bit of a struggle to lampoon a judge who admitted, in brief remarks after the show, that she was "not a very funny person," they made hay out of the judge eschewing traditional roles. For instance, her terrible cooking and her use of male plaintiffs to challenge discriminatory laws while working at the ACLU were both set to music—as was her long friendship with the late Antonin Scalia. 

"Read his words and there's genius gleaming / Though he's stuck on original meaning," sang attorney Felicia Berenson-Reinhardt, one of the actresses who portrayed Ginsburg and an associate court attorney in criminal court.

The cast and crew of "Quando ce ne sono nove (When There Are Nine): A Night at the Opera with Ruth Bader Ginsburg". Photo credit: Philip Furgang

Another conservative judge was not treated the same. In one scene, after an exasperated clerk asked Ginsburg how she kept her cool in the face of a right-wing majority, another actress portrayed a somewhat sinister version of the judge—dubbed "Ruthifer"—to hurl taunts and barbed criticism at Justice Samuel Alito while alternating lines with Ginsburg's calm but forceful dissent.

Among the cases that were acted out were United States v. Virginia, where Ginsburg's majority opinion resulted in the end of the men-only policy at the Virginia Military Academy, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, where Ginsburg dissented from a ruling that freed Hobby Lobby, whose owners were devout Christians, from having to provide health insurance to their employees that covered contraception.

The judge's more recent rise to political superstardom got a nod, too.

Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, portrayed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Stewart Aaron of the Southern District of New York, interrupted Ginsburg's workout (the guards were too busy "doing kegstands" in Justice Brett Kavanaugh's chambers to notice him sneak in, he said) to sing about how she'd become an online icon.

"Everybody ought to be a meme / Children dressing up as you on Halloween," he sang.

Ginsburg's jabots and loud necklaces were also a running joke. When Kevin Schwartz, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a onetime Ginsburg clerk, took the stage to defend her from the comedic onslaught, he opened by slipping on a chunky purple necklace and saying, "I dissent!"

The judge's love of opera, despite her inability to sing it, was another recurring theme. The show took musical inspiration from works including "Carmen," "The Marriage of Figaro," "Rigoletto," "Turandot," "La Traviata" and "Gianni Schicchi," according to the program. Schwartz told the story of a burly Supreme Court police officer who moaned to a clerk that he'd seen Madame Butterfly three times while on duty.

Ginsburg herself was seated in the front row. Speaking for just a few minutes at the end of the show, she talked about her history with the New York City Bar Association, whose building previously had just one woman's restroom, and said the show was at "the top of the heap" when it came to the honors she'd received from the organization.