The Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys, at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

It's been more than 30 years but I can still remember the first time I saw a Kander and Ebb musical, the movie version of Cabaret.

There were parts of the story, set in Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, that made me uncomfortable. But it also made me realize that a musical could explore a serious subject while still be entertaining in the best sense of the word. Cabaret was thoughtful, tuneful and powerful.

Watching The Scottsboro Boys, the final work from songwriters John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, I felt the same way. The story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931 is profound, moving and immensely entertaining musical theatre.

The Scottsboro Boys is told as a minstrel show, a format in which, traditionally, white performers in blackface would mimic African-Americans. Here, minstrelsy is turned on its head: black performers imitate white characters. And it's used not to ridicule black people but to illuminate the era's racism, which it does with chilling effectiveness.

John Cullum, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his Broadway debut, is the only white cast member. Looking like Southern gentry in his white suit and top hat, he's the interlocutor, urging the nine to sing and dance.

The ensemble numbers, like "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," that opens the show, were rousing and the choreography by Susan Stroman, who also directed, was thrilling.

But knowing what they represented, it made me uneasy to applaud. These were people being forced to "put on a show." And I think that was the point. The minstrel show, as hard as it was to watch sometimes, demonstrated how black men were viewed - as buffoonish objects of entertainment for white audiences.

Still, there's an important distinction in The Scottsboro Boys between how the nine are depicted when they're "performing" and how we see them when they're alone, in jail. (Beowulf Borritt's very simple set uses planks and silver-painted chairs to form cells, a courthouse and a train.)

Book writer David Thompson makes them far from stereotypes as their case winds its way through the legal system. He treats them as individuals and their stories with dignity and compassion. We learn about their lives, their hopes and fears, in a way that I found compelling.

The Scottsboro Boys focuses on Hayward Patterson, played by a spellbinding Joshua Henry. He's a proud, defiant man who won't be cowed into pleading guilty to something he didn't do. When he sang the gorgeous ballad "Go Back Home," it took my breath away.

But to me, the most heartbreaking was the youngest, Eugene Williams, portrayed with astonishing self-assurance by 12-year-old Jeremy Gumbs. His tap dance to the song "Electric Chair" was searing and nightmarish.

As Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play the white characters - sheriff, guards, lawyers, the attorney general - with outrageous, hilarious exaggeration. Likewise, Christian Dante White and James T. Lane are terrific in dual roles as two of the nine - and as their female accusers.

McClendon has a memorable turn as Samuel Leibowitz, the Jewish lawyer from New York who was a tireless advocate for the Scottsboro Boys. He's wonderful in "That's Not the Way We Do Things," which cleverly points out the sometimes patronizing attitudes of Northern white liberals. (Speaking as a Northern white liberal myself, it made me chuckle.)

And just as the musical shines a light on racism, it also exposes the era's anti-Semitism. In "Financial Advice," there's a derisive reference to Jewish money paying for the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. Hard to hear, yes, but historically accurate and reflective of how Jews were viewed by white Southerners.

What The Scottsboro Boys did so well was remind me that the struggle for civil rights in this country occurred from the bottom up, sparked by ordinary black men and women who had simply had enough.

These were poor people, arrested while riding the rails to look for work in the middle of the Depression. Some of them couldn't read or write. But as the musical reveals, they left a legacy - one that stunned me and left me incredibly moved.

The Scottsboro Boys is a thoughtful, tuneful and powerful American story.

Gee, Officer Laurents

There's an interesting column by Michael Riedel in the New York Post about director Arthur Laurents supposedly laying down the law to the cast of West Side Story over repeated absences. (Thanks to Steve on Broadway for the tip.)

"His tone, I'm told, was chilling. The 91-year-old told them that professionals don't miss performances, and that they'd better get their acts together or find another line of work."

Whoa!

I think there were five understudies the night I saw West Side Story but luckily, all of the principals were in. And I would have been disappointed if I'd missed seeing Karen Olivo in her Tony-winning role as Anita or Josefina Scaglione making her Broadway debut as Maria.

I'm sure this is a musical that takes a pretty heavy toll on its cast. I've sat close enough to the stage to see the sweat, so I know that some Broadway performers get quite a workout up there, especially in musicals. It's not the type of thing you'd want to do when you're sick or hurt.

The comments from (naturally) anonymous producers struck me as a tad unfair, making generalizations, painting everyone with the same broad brush - "Some of them are more loyal to their gym than they are to their show."

I'm sure there are lots of dedicated young performers on Broadway who go on no matter what. And I have no way of knowing whether the criticism of the West Side Story cast is justified.

Still, maybe there is a bit of a generational divide.

I think 79-year-old John Cullum, who was then in August: Osage County, made an interesting point in a Variety article in June about older actors treading the boards on Broadway:

"The young people are just as good as they ever were. If you work with people my age, though, you're talking about people who really feel terrible if they can't go to a performance. That mentality is really part of their makeup."

John Cullum pulls double duty

I have a soft spot for John Cullum. We go way back - in the 1980s I saw him on stage in Syracuse, in Look Homeward, Angel. This was years before I saw him on Broadway in 110 in the Shade.

So I really enjoyed this interview Jeff Lunden from NPR did with the 79-year-old Cullum about what it's like to perform in two plays at once.

As patriarch Beverly Weston, Cullum has the opening scene in August: Osage County. The 3 1/2-hour play begins at 7:30. But he's only on stage at Broadway's Music Box Theatre for about 15 minutes. Then that's it, he's done. Well, not really.

Six days a week, the two-time Tony winner leaves the Music Box on West 45th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue, and takes a brisk 11-minute walk to the Harold Clurman Theatre on 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. (New York magazine has a timeline.)

He arrives at the off-Broadway venue roughly 20 minutes before curtain time for his second role of the evening. In Heroes, Cullum portrays one of three World War I veterans who dream of escaping from an old-soldiers home. (That's him on the right, with costars Jonathan Hogan and Ron Holgate.)

There's a nice interactive map showing Cullum's route and you can hear more from him at several points along the way. As he passes the Majestic Theatre, for example, he talks about auditioning for his first Broadway role, in Camelot, in 1960. "It was a hard drinking, wild partying extravagant musical."

I have to hand it to him. Cullum could have just done his August: Osage County bit and gone home. But he truly loves being on stage:

"More people see you in one episode of a big TV series than will ever see you [in] your entire career onstage," he says. "Something very strange about that. But look at how many actors come back to New York to recharge their batteries, so to speak. Or else they just want to do stuff onstage, because there's nothing quite like performing in front of a live audience. It's infectious."

Of course, Cullum isn't the only actor who's pulled double duty. In a 2006 interview with the American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center program, Cynthia Nixon talks about appearing simultaneously in Hurlyburly and The Real Thing for a span of about three months in 1984.

(And if the person from the American Theatre Wing who left a comment yesterday is reading this, I hope Downstage Center returns soon!)