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'The Scottsboro Boys' Will Shock Some, But Its Heart and Music Will Win Audiences Over

By DNAinfo Staff on November 11, 2010 12:26pm

Cast members attend the opening night of 'The Scottsboro Boys' on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on Oct. 31, 2010.
Cast members attend the opening night of 'The Scottsboro Boys' on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on Oct. 31, 2010.
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John W. Ferguson/Getty Images

By Michael Avila

Special to DNAinfo

As the lights drop and "The Scottsboro Boys" begins, a black woman sits on a chair on the sparsely decorated stage. Quickly, the scene transforms into a minstrel show. And the audience instantly realizes it is not your typical toe-tapping, feel-good Broadway musical.

"The Scottsboro Boys" is a new musical that uses controversial methods to tell the real-life story of nine African-American teens wrongly accused and put on trial in Alabama for allegedly raping two white women in 1931.

"The Scottsboro Boys" uses the racist minstrel show, which includes actors in blackface, as a framing device to tell a story about the infamous case of racial injustice. The sensitive subject matter and its presentation intentionally makes the show uncomfortable to watch at times. This is by no means a politically correct show, which explains why there have been protests outside the Lyceum Theatre. However, those people may be missing the point.

Actress Sharon Washington on the opening night of 'The Scottsboro Boys' on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on Oct. 31, 2010.
Actress Sharon Washington on the opening night of 'The Scottsboro Boys' on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on Oct. 31, 2010.
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John W. Ferguson/Getty Images

It is much more than shock staging that makes "The Scottsboro Boys" an impressive slice of musical theater. The production boils over with heart, anger and righteousness, with some sparkling musical numbers to boot. It features a mix of roof-raising song and satiric social commentary as it dramatizes the notorious 1931 incident. 

John Cullum, the only Caucasian actor in the show, is the MC of the wildly inappropriate minstrel show. As the black actors prepare to do their showstopper, about "The Scottsboro Boys," one of them asks: "Can we say what really happened this time?"

The nine young men thought they were heading for greener pastures while riding a boxcar through Alabama. Instead, falsely accused by two white women of rape, they become victims of "Alabama Justice."

Each one handles their incarceration and their impending lynching differently. Haywood Patterson becomes the group’s de facto leader and its conscience. He refuses to kowtow to his white jailers or to cave to pleas from defense attorneys to admit guilt where there is none. All the while, he uses his time in prison to transform himself.

Haywood, played by Joshua Henry, is the engine that drives the show. It’s no stretch to imagine him singing "You Can’t Do Me," one of the show’s standout numbers, at the Tony Awards next June. He’s that good.

Director Susan Stroman ("The Producers") wisely gets out of the way and lets her talented cast and the music do the heavy lifting. Special mention goes to Christian Dante White and James T. Lane for juggling multiple roles as two of the Scottsboro boys and the two women whose lies touch off the entire incident. Their "Alabama Ladies" duet is a hoot.

However, one of the show’s shortcomings is that it seems bound and determined to underscore the absurdity of the case against the nine teenagers with humor. But unlike "Hairspray," the bouncy Tony Award-winning musical set in segregated Baltimore, "The Scottsboro Boys" doesn’t marginalize the brutal racism of the era it inhabits. It just skewers it with sharp satire. Most times it works, but at times it makes for uncomfortable tonal shifts.

It takes some getting used to laughing at broad caricatures of bigoted Southern lawmen when watching the retelling of a shameful moment in American history. At times, Cullum’s characters, particularly the interlocutor of the minstrel show and governor of Alabama, are over-the-top to the point of distraction.

"The Scottsboro Boys", which is the final collaboration between the legendary Broadway duo John Kander and Fred Ebbs, also occasionally crosses that fine line between righteousness and smug condescension. It’s a common problem for adaptations of true stories, and the show stumbles into that trap during the courtroom scenes.

"The Scottsboro Boys" overcomes these missteps, and concludes with an act of defiance that is subtle and striking. It also provides a sobering coda by informing us about the fate of the teenage boys. Their ending is not a happy one.

When the identity of the woman we first met at the start of the show is finally revealed, we learn that these nine young men had an impact they couldn’t have imagined. That is the legacy "The Scottsboro Boys" brings to the stage, with intensity, power, and a little humor.