Scottsboro Boys at Ahmanson is dazzling

We had tickets to the NY production but the damn thing closed 2 weeks before our performance date, so we've been making due with frequent listens to the chilling CD for the last two years. FINALLY last night we got to see in the flesh what the actual theater experience was like.

The show is a miracle of writing, composing, staging and especially performance from beginning to end. It grabs you in the opening number and simply doesn't let go till the finale. Gorgeously sung, terrifyingly acted, every single moment hands you two emotions at once: dazzlement at the level of performance (gorgeous or funny or thrilling on its own) and horror at what minstrelsy we're being forced to look at and laugh at. Brecht never had better handmaidens than Susan Stroman and Kander and Ebb (with a rigorous and chilling book by David Thompson). For 2 hours the show walks the line so carefully between entertainment and message that they fuse into a new synthesis of theater. This feels like the show Kander and Ebb were always reaching for from CABARET through THE RINK up to KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN, but never achieved so seamlessly till now.

A word about the glowing performances. Joshua Henry has rightfully been hailed for his star turn as Haywood, and he is a rock onstage: oddly regal and magnificent in the part. It was gorgeous to see Hal Linden still in such perfect command of the stage (an iron fist served with a surprisingly light and gentle touch) in John Cullum's part as the Interlocutor. But for us the most astonishing turns are from Gilbert Bailey's Ruby Bates, Trent Armand Kendall's Mr. Bones and JC Montgomery's Mr. Tambo. They each nailed the minstrelsy inherent in every minute onstage, the horror and the humor that would choke in your throat. Brilliant night.

It's the definition of a show NOT for the tourist trade. The Ahmanson audiences are smart aware theater-goers with lots of subscription members at the beginning of a run. (The house was close to full but not quite--a little disappointing for a Friday night).

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to entice busloads of blue haired ladies and church groups in to the show when it was competing on Broadway with Mama Mia and Rock of Ages.

It needs to be a movie.

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Directed my Tyler Perry who also plays Rosa Parks.

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You are so lucky to be seeing Josh Henry. He was magnificent. I listened to the cast recording yesterday and just thinking about the show gets me all teary. I was absolutely speechless when I saw it on Broadway. Took me a while to be able to talk about it without getting choked up. One of the most moving pieces of theatre I have ever seen.

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It's a tour or a sit down production?


ANYWAY....I fell in love with this in NY and was truly heartbroken by its early closing. Moreso, methinks, than I've ever been about a show that didn't truly get to fully strut its stuff. I was incredibly moved, and so pleased to hear another production can make others feel the same thing.

Thanks for posting.

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How are the protests !!!

This was one of my favourite nights in a theatre:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.php?thread=1025261&mobile=on

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I hope you enjoy it, Bob. My husband loved it!

I'm really looking forward to seeing this as well. I'm going Tuesday night. My assistant went tonight, so I'm sure I'll get a review from her in the morning.

I also apologize for coming down hard on SOMEONE.... It's kinda hard to put down anyone named for one of my fav Sondheim ditties.
My point is, if you are going to compare with Brecht, do some research. Brecht's "Theatre of Alienation" is the opposite of what SCOTTSBORO is trying to make us feel.

Updated On: 6/3/13 at 09:57 PM

Wow, Gaveston and Curtainpulldowner, you guys are both total sweethearts for recalibrating the tone of your earlier posts. I don't think I've witnessed such gentlemanliness on these boards in a while. (And thanks to Gaveston's husband as well!)

You're right to chastise me for my cliff-notes shorthand use of Brecht's name to indicate a certain kind of social critique-play dressed up in the tropes of musical entertainment in order to distance the audience from bathos and melodrama. I'm thinking of Brecht's RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONY, and THREEPENNY OPERA as templates for Scottsboro. I agree that the writers' intent may be the opposite of Brecht's (Kander and Ebb certainly DO want us to feel the boys' plight), but there's no denying many of their techniques are similar.

I was also contending that Kander and Ebb were struggling over and over throughout their long careers to find that successful marriage between show-biz presentation and social critique. CABARET, ZORBA, CHICAGO, THE RINK, KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN, STEEL PIER -- they all used aspects of vaudeville, or music hall, or period pop ditties, or movie musical conventions to illustrate a story full of horror and pain. Some achieved that goosebump effect for a few scenes, some for more of the evening. My excitement in watching SCOTTSBORO BOYS the other night came from the feeling that at the very end of their storied collaboration, for me at least, they at last had achieved the thing they had been striving for, for an entire show from start to finish.

Updated On: 6/4/13 at 12:03 AM

Since we're headed for a new page, I want to reiterate that I loved the LA cast.

Even the staging was confident and skillful; I just found it heavy handed.

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Someone in a Tree, Brecht had no objection to feeling, he just didn't want us to pretend we could feel what the characters feel. He wanted us to "own" (in the modern parlance) our own outrage at the situation on stage. SCOTTSBORO invites this, in places, but to me fails to suggest what we might do with our indignation.

As for Kander & Ebb, I have some mutual friends and they all swear that both are/were terrific gentlemen, kind and generous. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

And I love their experimentations with presentational technique in musical theater. (Since musicals are almost never realistic, why not go full out in the opposite direction?)

But when I look at their works, I'm not sure about their politics. KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN seems to portray Latin American socialist politics as a con game (when compared to its source material). Even CABARET, my favorite film musical, on recent viewing seemed to be saying, "If you have the abortion, the Nazis win."

My ire over SCOTTSBORO is probably a result of my own, too-high expectations; but I wonder how anyone could dramatize that terrible chapter from the 1930s without noting that we are STILL executing and locking up innocent black people today?

This is speculation on my part, but I think of K&E as "Connecticut liberals". They probably vote the same as I do, but have more in common with commercial audiences than political activists. And that's okay. I just got it in my head that I was going to see something more with SCOTTSBORO.

Everyone should compare SCOTTSBORO to Luis Valdez' ZOOT SUIT, one of the great American plays of the past half-century and, in its day, the longest running original play in LA history. Valdez also deals with a trial of innocent men by a rigged and bigoted judicial system. But Valdez keeps us thinking, even as we feel righteously indignant. And in the process, he also humanizes the defendants more than K&E do.

Most important, Valdez ends his narrative by relating it specifically to Chicanos of the present so that we can't reassure ourselves that the events of the play are confined to the past.

Updated On: 6/4/13 at 07:53 PM