‘The Scottsboro Boys’: A Musical Social Critique

Theater Review

When four Broadway veterans—director/choreographer Susan Stroman, writer David Thompson and musical duo John Kander and Fred Ebb—began brainstorming for an idea for a show in 2002, they directed their creative juices toward an event in history, but something with a bite.
Thus was born “The Scottsboro Boys,” based on the trials of nine young African-American boys who were falsely convicted of raping two white women, in a heinous mockery of justice that led to the destruction of these innocents’ lives.
It is no novelty for American musical theater to tackle social commentary. Beginning with Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” in 1927, musicals turned away from the trivial and unrealistic operettas, light musical comedies and “Follies”-type musical revues that defined Broadway in the 1890s and early 20th century. Composers, lyricists and playwrights began to use the genre as a response to and sometimes a revisionist take on current events. Broader social, cultural and political commentary ran as undercurrents in many works: racial bigotry (“Showboat,” “Porgy and Bess” and “South Pacific”), changing social mores (“South Pacific”) and workers rights (“Pajama Game”), to name a few.
In order to create the storyline as shocking as the real-life events unfolded in the early 1930s, the “Scottsboro” creative team decided to present it as a classic minstrel show, featuring stock conventions of the genre: ridiculous costumes, a chatty interlocutor (the white emcee guiding the show) and the traditional closing dance, the Cakewalk, often performed in blackface.
The audience is treated to the buffoonery used as a clear metaphor of the judicial system itself. We are caught laughing at the burlesque, while discomfited by the manner in which these nine lives were hijacked and victimized. The theatricality of music and dance is undercut by the heartbreaking sadness and helplessness we share with the prisoners.
Accompanying the action is a playlist that includes familiar minstrel fare serving as a fool’s mask while delivering biting social criticism without offending the audience.
The current production at the Ahmanson Theatre through June 30 features an ensemble that is matchless in highwire athleticism, singing and acting. The choreography exceeds the customary dance corps numbers and mimics the classic minstrel moves (“Minstrel March”), such as the sliding steps, shuffle and the fast-paced breakdown that formed part of the repertoire.
One of the prisoners, Haywood Patterson (Joshua Henry), becomes the lead character, symbolizing the frustration and futility blacks suffered in the cruel, racist South. He shares his pain with the audience, offering the classic loose-limbed, bug-eyed Sambo-type pastiche, the angry righteous protest song (“Zat So?/You Can’t Do Me” and the poignant ballad  “Go Back Home.”
Hal Linden plays The Interlocutor, a sort of Colonel Sanders still living in the bubble of the glorious South. He is almost grotesquely lovable clinging to a portrait of America that is still alive with all too vivid memories. The show reverberates with the harsh truth of our disgraceful racial past.
Palisadian Catherine Schreiber was a producer on the original Broadway show, which was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. In March 2011, she was invited to give the keynote speech at the 80th anniversary of the Scottsboro Affair in Scottsboro, Alabama, and receive the key to the city.