The cast of Kander and Ebb’s The Scottsboro Boys at the Vineyard Theatre
(Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg)
The last musical by the team of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, The Scottsboro Boys, is having its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre. It follows stagings in various venues of three other musicals left in differing stages of completion when Ebb passed away: The Visit, from the play by Friedrich Durrenmatt; All About Us, based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth;, and Curtains, the musical murder mystery which appeared on Broadway in 2007. The new show, The Scottsboro Boys, both ambitious and sophisticated, is based on a historic miscarriage of justice in Alabama in the 1930’s. It has been given a sensational staging by director/choreographer Susan Stroman and brings John Cullum back to the musical stage.
The Scottsboro Boys reunites the Vineyard Theatre with composer Kander, book writer David Thompson, and choreographer Stroman (who along with lyricist Ebb) previously collaborated on the 1987 revival of Flora, the Red Menace. Like Chicago, Kander and Ebb’s long-running Broadway musical, The Scottsboro Boys uses a framing device. Where Chicago uses vaudeville, the new show uses the minstrel show. Aside from Cullum as the Interlocutor, the minstrel show’s M.C. and narrator, the musical uses an all-black cast.
At first, the minstrel show concept seems perfect for the material: a satiric handling of a serious subject. However, this flippant delivery eventually undercuts both the horror and the emotion of the situation: nine young black men falsely accused of raping two white women on a train and sentenced to death, while being put through eight Alabama trials all of which were miscarriages of justice. The old jokes tend to dissipate the gravity of the events. Another problem with Thompson’s book is that only three of the young men are given any real character development, while the other underwritten roles remain a blur as part of the group collectively known as “The Scottsboro Boys.”
The minstrel show commences from the very beginning with Cullum’s interlocutor assisted by Mr. Bones (Colman Domingo) and Mr. Tambo (Forrest McClendon) and the command, “Gentlemen, be seated!” Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design reuses props to set various scenes, from a train, to a prison cell, to a court room. The story is centered on accused Haywood Patterson, (Brandon Victor Dixon), the most controversial of the Scottsboro Boys, who from the first refused to plead guilty to something he did not do. Dixon gives a charismatic performance as this man of integrity and honor, and proves himself an admirable song and dance man leading the largest group of the musical numbers.
Only Julius Thomas III’s literate Roy Wright who teaches Haywood his alphabet and Cody Ryan Wise as Eugene Williams, the youngest of the accused, at 13 still almost a child, are differentiated from the other nine. Domingo and McClendon do yeoman service playing at least four roles each, including McClendon as Samuel Leibowitz, the New York lawyer sent by Northern sympathizers to take the case. The actors who play the Scottsboro Boys also double as both the other men and women. Christian Dante White and Sean Bradford comically play the two women of loose reputation who bring the accusation.
Rodney Hicks, John Cullum and Brandon Victor Dixon
in a scene from The Scottsboro Boys
(Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)
The Kander and Ebb songs, some of which resemble numbers in Chicago, are more than serviceable but are not top drawer. Dixon gives impassioned renditions of “Nothin’” and “You Can’t Do Me.” The ensemble has a lovely ballad, “Southern Days” as well as the rousing, “Go Back Home.” Both Lawyer Leibowitz’s “That’s Not the Way We Do Things” and the Attorney General’s “Financial Advice” pack quite a wallop.
Stroman’s vigorous and stirring musical staging makes use of both the jazz and cakewalk elements in the score. A particularly memorable number is the tap dance executed by Kendrick Jones and Julius Thomas III to “Electric Chair,” incorporating young Eugene’s nightmare. Cullum who has the least singing and dancing performs both “It’s Gonna Take Time” and “Zat So.”
The Scottsboro Boys is an ambitious attempt to put a piece of ugly American history on the stage in a sophisticated format. Its minstrel framework allows it to telescope a great many events over a period of years, but at the same time its broad acting style and satiric and comic thrust dilutes the emotions inherent in the material. The one hour and forty-five minute running time may also have made it impossible to do the story justice. In addition to Brandon Victor Dixon’s star-making performance, the exciting production that the show has been given by Susan Stroman makes this a worthy piece of musical theater, nevertheless.
(through April 18)
The Vineyard Theatre, 108 E. 15th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-353-0303 or http://www.vineyardtheatre.org