Scottsboro Boys at Ahmanson is dazzling

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 11:08am

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.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 11:30am

I am glad the tour is good! It was a crying shame this show closed so quickly on Broadway. Just bad word of mouth about the Minstrelsy aspects from people who never even saw the show. I was very moved by it.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 11:42am

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.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:02pm

I LOVED this show. So sad it closes so quickly. And it's not the kind of show that I think will really live on in regional theaters, but maybe. It's a classic in my eyes and I'm surprised it wasn't a finalist for the Pulitzer. It's pretty damn good.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:06pm

It needs to be a movie.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:11pm

Starring Will & Jaden Smith.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:26pm

Directed my Tyler Perry who also plays Rosa Parks.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:30pm

Here's the thing about a movie, bestie. When you FILM a minstrel show, (and maybe even see an onscreen audience laughing and sweating a la the filmed audiences in Fosse's CABARET,) you're taking the LIVE audience in the movie theater off the hook. Why SCOTTSBORO BOYS is so powerful onstage is hearing the person next to you laugh uproariously at something unspeakable, and there's nowhere to hide.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:47pm

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.

[DAME]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 1:23pm

Going on a week night. I would suggest staying away from matinees.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 3:34pm

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.

[LuminousBeing]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 6:45pm

Thank you for letting us know that the show is in such great shape. I was lucky enough to see it at the Vinyard and again at the Lyceum, and was crestfallen when it couldn't fly at the box office the way it deserved to.

Add me to those who admire Joshua Henry's performance. (He was also lovely in Paulus's "Porgy").

[JarqueLemos]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 6:54pm

How are the protests !!!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 8:12pm

Sorry, Someone in a Tree, but Brecht is rolling in his grave.

I second your opinion of the production, which is indeed excellent, but the play itself is an argument with only one side. Brecht expressly likened his Epic Theater to a boxing match and hoped the audience would take sides as avidly as at a sporting match.

In SCOTTSBORO, Southern racism is bad; black Southerners of the 1930s are helpless. I wholeheartedly agree that racism is bad, but without a true conflict (since the chosen victims are indeed powerless), THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS has more in common with a Christmas pageant than with a Brechtian play or musical.

Merely having presentational elements does not Epic Theater make.

Stroman's direction is no less heavy-handed: the production opens with a black woman waiting for a bus. Gee! Who could she be? The rest of the evening is equally obvious.

I admit I was bitterly disappointed, because I was really looking forward to the evening. I very much like the score and the vocal arrangements. But there is no there there; maybe you meant "dazzling" literally.



Updated On: 6/1/13 at 08:12 PM

[binau]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 8:19pm

This was one of my favourite nights in a theatre:

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

[FishermanBob]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 11:05pm

Seeing it next Saturday night. McNulty at the L.A. Times gave it a rave. Looking forward to it.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/2/13 at 11:23am

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

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/2/13 at 1:52pm

I agree with Gaveston, if you think this piece is Brechtian you need read a book and not use words and terms to sound smarter than you actually are. The one-sidedness and Sentimentality of SCOTTSBORO would make Brecht puke. The show has it's merits, especially the score but making a Minstrel show the format is far from inventive or original and when done by WhiteFolk, adds to the heavy handed approach. The show is far above most crap these days but I don't hold it as high as others.

[jwsel]

Posted: 6/3/13 at 1:08am

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.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/3/13 at 9:08pm

CurtainPullDowner, I don't think Someone in a Tree was trying to sound smarter than he is. For one thing, he IS smart and has demonstrated his intelligence in many threads.

For another, "Brechtian" has come to be used as a synonym for presentational theater. Obviously, you and I think that's an unfortunate oversimplification and SCOTTSBORO doesn't qualify as Brechtian, but it doesn't prove the OP was being pretentious.

(Confidential to Someone in a Tree: my husband read this thread and said my original response to you came across much too harsh. If so, I apologize. Obviously, I have a strong opinion about SCOTTSBORO, but that isn't to suggest that I have lowered my estimation of you or your posts. I simply disagree about this particular show.)

If Brecht were alive today, he would say the problem with SCOTTSBORO is that it invites us to believe such atrocities were a thing of the past, ignores the degree to which racism STILL influences our judicial system, and offers no solution for how to fix our still-very-much-corrupted courts! Brecht would add that those of you who were so moved by the show illustrate the problem: you had a hearty cry and felt better (i.e., you had an emotional catharsis), but how were you inspired to act differently?

ETA: I agree with CurtainPullDowner about the minstrel show concept. It's already a one-sided story. Enacting it as a minstrel show only beats us over the head even harder! And the satire of the minstrelsy isn't directed at African-American stereotypes, it's directed at redneck racists. So what is daring about joining in the laughter? Updated On: 6/3/13 at 09:08 PM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/3/13 at 9:57pm

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

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/3/13 at 10:49pm

Brecht has been taught so badly in American schools: oversimplified, mistranslated and late work conflated with early work. In fact, he experimented with "learning plays" early in his career and found that theater wasn't a very effective teaching tool.

What he decided theater COULD do is provoke critical thinking about our most cherished assumptions--but not when a play gives us a neat beginning, middle and end set comfortably in the past.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 12:03am

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

[WickedOne2]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 12:42am

I saw it last night and thought it was brilliant. I too wanted to see it on Broadway but it closed before I could see it. Joshua Henry is amazing and has such a stage presence, I found myself gravitating toward him. Third show I have seen him in (Porgy & Bess and American Idiot were the other two) The rest of the cast was fantastic. Highly recommend it.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 7:53pm

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.

***

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