Robert Tanitch reviews The Scottsboro Boys at Garrick Theatre, London WC2
The Scottsboro boys were nine African-American teenage boys who were falsely accused of rape by two white girls in Alabama in 1931. The boys didn’t get a fair trial. They were tried three times and each time they were found guilty by an all-white jury. They were guilty only because they were black.
It doesn’t seem a promising subject for a Broadway musical; but John Kander and Fred Ebb, the authors of Cabaret and Chicago, have done a brilliant job and turned the trials into a minstrel show. This exhilarating show was a sell-out at the Young Vic last year and has now, at long last, got its well deserved West End transfer. I enjoyed it as much all over again.
The music and lyrics are great. The singing is great. The choreography is great. The dancing is great. As Kander himself has so rightly said, “If you don’t make it entertaining, no one will listen.”
The open vaudeville format gives the songwriters and Susan Stroman who directs and choreographs the production, considerable freedom to do whatever they want in the way of burlesquing racial bigotry in the judicial system.
The black actors not only play the accused men; they also play all the white characters. The most disturbing moment of all is when they all black up to play white actors playing black minstrels.
Brandon Victor Dixon, James T Lane, Keenan Munn-Francis and Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon as the minstrel comedians, Mr Bones and Mr Tambo, head a versatile and exciting ensemble.
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