STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Uneasy but thought-provoking

1/1/2012

0 Comments

 
​The Scottsboro Boys, a product of the prodigious team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago), is no sunny, hum-along musical. The final collaboration between the two before Ebb passed away in 2004, The Scottsboro Boys is based on the true story of nine black teen boys who in 1931 in Alabama were accused of the rape of two white women. It’s also staged as a musical within a minstrel show, an intentionally subversive touch that pulls no sociopolitical punches. One might have foreseen that in spite of its success at Minneapolis’ noted Guthrie Theatre and an Off-Broadway stage, the show closed at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway after only 29 previews and 49 regular performances.
            A year and a half after its disappointing reception on the Great White Way, The Scottsboro Boys is getting new life at the Old Globe Theatre, again under the skilled direction of Susan Stroman (The Producers), who also created the show’s choreography. David Thompson (Steel Pier, Flora the Red Menace) wrote the book. Even with a fresh start and all the heavyweight talent behind it, The Scottsboro Boys is still a difficult and painful story to tell to music, and its intentions to enlighten, shock and parody, all in one two-hour act, make for a bumpy ride.
             Its potency is in the Scottsboro Boys’ ensemble numbers, including “Shout!”, “Chain Gang” and both “Make Friends With the Truth” and “You Can’t Do Me,” those two led by the charismatic Clifton Duncan as Haywood Patterson. He is the story’s conscience and its beacon of courage. On the other hand, numbers such as “Electric Chair,” in which the youngest of the accused Scottsboro Boys (Nile Bullock) is taunted and given a taste of electrification by two “comically” devious prison guards, are uneasy. And the arrival of the accused youths’ second attorney Samuel Leibowitz, belting out “That’s Not the Way We Do Things,” is a spirited but obvious crowd pleaser.
            This Scottsboro Boys may strain for a consistent tone much of the way, but it soars as it nears its finish, with a minstrel-makeup sequence that is both daring and defiant, and a quietly stirring passing of the civil rights torch to Rosa Parks.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page