Every
number of years, a musical comes
along about which the question, "Does it work?" is impossible to
address in bald, unequivocal terms because there's no bald, unequivocal
answer.
That it's a musical destined for—to use that depressing and misleading
phrase—cult longevity rather than commercial success is certain, but
whether that means near obscurity or
near to the heart of musical fans all over
is what nothing but time can determine.
One expects, though, that The Scottsboro Boys will fall into the
latter
category, especially thanks to it's debut production at the Vineyard
Theatre, directed and
choreographed by the
redoubtable Susan Stroman, which
is an evening of dazzlng, pointed, expert professionalism from start to
finish.
The
musical, with music by John Kander and
lyrics by the late Fred Ebb,
takes as its focus one of the outrageous tragedies of American
jurisprudence:
the convenient framing, in Scottsboro Alabama of 1931, of nine young
black man
on a falsified charge of rape. Just as the Kander-Ebb Chicago is
presented
as a vaudeville and their Cabaret as an encroaching Nazi nightmare
dramatized within the environment of
an underground German nightclub, The Scottsboro Boys utilizes a performance genre as its
vehicle—that being the traveling, blackface minstrel show. There is,
however,
only one white face in the cast, that of the evening’s host, occasional
narrator and untrustworthy guide, the Interlocutor (the ubiquitous yet
still
astonishingly reliable John Cullum, in the kind of Deep
South
role he can perform in his sleep, though happily doesn’t). The other
cast
members are black, only two of whom perform in (implied but never
literal)
whiteface as various members of the white, legal establishment (Colman
Domingo
and Forrest McClendon). The others are the Boys, the principal
personality
being Haywood Patterson (Brandon Victor Dixon). On rare occasion, one or two will
briefly assume
another needed white character, most prominently the two women claiming
to have
been violated (Christian Dante White and Sean Bradford).
There is also a real woman, one, a silent observer until the very end (Sharon
Washington). Who she turns out
to be shall
not be revealed here.
The
factors that fight the musical’s mainstream popularity are these: While
framing
the story as a minstrel show makes for delicious irony, and turns the
hoary old
device into a terrific not-so-secret weapon, it also creates a
distancing
effect that's maintained for far too long. The Scottsboro Boys remain
an
unparticularized group of nine until the third number begins, and then
only
slowly do a lead personality and supporting characters start to emerge.
Plus
there's the fact that the group are victims: acted upon, never active,
rarely
in control, ever only RE-active, hence they can’t drive the story
forward. What
drives the story is a corrupt legal system, replete with stalling,
politicking,
deceptive dealing and outright bald chicanery, so the only thing that
can
really happen is for our passive heroes to hit one roadblock after
another in
their quest for justice, and that creates for very slow moving
narrative (even
when there are jumps in time). Further, as dramatized in the libretto
by David
Thompson, the boys are presented
as
broad-stroke essences. Not even their internal lives
develop
much, because, for all intents and purposes, who they were in the real
world
has been put into suspended animation unless or until they can leave
prison.
If
the show seems to suggest echoes of Parade, indeed the Brown-Uhry-Prince comes to
mind, but only as a
free-association, not as a spectre. Parade never truly made its case as an agit-prop
statement,
but rather seemed like kneejerk liberal Deep South bashing, well beyond
the
historical era in which it might have been appropriate. But The
Scottsboro
Boys more successfully frames
its tale as a historical incident and its agenda as a cautionary tale
for any
age or society—the South of the
50s
serving as a metaphor for unjust regimes anywhere—in no small measure
thanks to its aforementioned sense of irony, especially as expressed
via catchy
song and thrilling dance, which are prone to present nightmare giddily
through
the filter of a gay (in the old sense) funhouse mirror.
Works,
doesn’t work—I don’t know what to tell you. But the show does exactly
what it sets out to do, and by that standard, one must judge it a
rousing
success, on its own terms. Which makes it, for musical theatre lovers,
a show
that must be seen. Any further assessment of worth must be in the eye
of the
beholder. And that’s justice…
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