Scottsboro Boys at Ahmanson is dazzling- Page 2

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 9:01pm

Interesting discussion, Gaveston. I suspect your critiques of Kander and Ebb's incomplete record on exploring social ills in Broadway musicals (or the movies made from them) are better aimed at the book-writers of each project rather than at the composer/lyricists.

I think in each of their shows, the social settings were chosen because there was a great story to tell there, a personal story of emotion and resonance, not because there was a chance to plumb the depths of a morally bankrupt societal ill that needed to be exposed. I think K&E were as passionate about showing the truth of their stories as Jason Robert Brown was with PARADE, Bernstein et al were with WEST SIDE STORY, or Oscar Hammerstein (and his collaborators) were with SHOWBOAT or SOUTH PACIFIC. They were all theater artists more than polemicists. I'm glad to hear your view that the creators of ZOOT SUIT went further (sorry to have missed that production), but you must admit that depthful analysis is rarely a feature of even our greatest musicals.

In the instance of SCOTTSBORO BOYS, you may be right that letting audiences know the unjust and unequal incarceration of black men continues to our own day should be part of the story of the play. Friends I saw the show with weren't even sure they thought the Rosa Parks element should have been part of the story (though it worked completely for me.) I think the point of the show (or any show) is to show what's germane to these characters and their story, and if done well, those in the audience will be inspired to pursue the facts of the larger story on their own.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 9:45pm

But interestingly and to me, Someone, SCOTTSBORO doesn't even dramatize its central characters with any specificity (with the arguable exceptions of Heywood and the 13-year-old). K&E and Co. have chosen a chapter of history in which the black people were particularly helpless; since they are helpless, they are passive and we don't get a chance to know them.

To me, it's white people writing about how other, less enlightened white people did bad things to helpless black people. And I can only reply, "Well, duh!"

***

But as to your main point, yes, I agree that when we say "Kander and Ebb" here, we mean "Kander and Ebb and Fosse" or "K&E and Prince and Masteroff", etc. The composer and lyricist stand in for a team.

***

You can rent ZOOT SUIT on NetFlix, I expect; a film was made of the stage production. It also shows up from time to time on the Sundance Channel or IFC. The singing and dancing aren't up to the standards of SCOTTSBORO, but it's still a much better play, I think.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 10:10pm

I don't believe K&E had a particular political agenda in their work or as a goal.
Their genius is that they can adapt their music and lyrics to all kinds of stories and themes, and yet maintain their own style. I met them both and they are/were smart, funny and lovable.

Not to sound like a cliché but I would have loved it if K&E had teamed up with a more "diverse" team on this show. George Wolfe might have found a new take on the theme.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/4/13 at 10:54pm

I agree, Curtain.

I want to be very clear that I am NOT accusing the creators of being racist, but there's no question that SCOTTSBORO deals mostly with white people and what they are doing (even if those white people are portrayed, sarcastically, by blacks). I couldn't help but wonder how the play is experienced by African-Americans.

Unfortunately, there were few if any in attendance at the Ahmanson the night I was there.

Perhaps that was really the point: to say to the white audience, "THIS is how African-Americans really see you." But if so, why weren't there more prominent African-Americans on the creative team? (Given his credits, I assume the book writer is white.)

Unfortunately, I am not nor have I ever been a Southern segregationist, a perjurer or a Legal Aid lawyer from New York. So it was hard to see myself in the white people satirized by the piece; they seem irretrievably "other".

[Blactor]

Posted: 6/5/13 at 12:03am

I have friends that did the show, so I've seen it multiple times. Although SB Boys is a powerful piece of theatre, it is absolutely true that it suffers from its lack of a creative African-American voice. Toni Leslie-James, the costumer, is the only person of color on the creative or design teams.

I attended a talkback in San Francisco where a young audience member asked the creators about how they created authenticity while writing for black characters. Susan Stroman side-stepped the question completely by stating that the actors, via their individual personas, give the piece its authenticity. Many in the audience were less-than-satisfied with the empty reply.

It is very much a show seemingly built for the benefit of white audiences; near the top of the show one character tells another "we're going to get a trial, then we're going to go home". No black person in the Jim Crow south, in hot water over charges of miscegenational rape, would be that naive. At another point, the Jewish lawyer screams at one of the guys "You're guilty because of the way you look", and it's supposed to be shocking information. It's not because the lawyer is simply stating what would be obvious to any black audience member. But the mostly white audience DID find the moment shocking.

At times the suffering of the young men--and by extension, blacks at large--feels exploited. And although Kander & Ebb are BRILLIANT song-writers, I definitely wonder what the score would have been like had the composers been Black. I listen to Chicago or Cabaret and hear different and specific musical influences...SB Boys seems sanitized of its blackness, musically. For me, at least.

It's a knockout play, and its heart is in the right place, but I wish people with more personal experience of the particular atrocities and indignities written about in the piece had actually had a voice in the creation of the piece. Sure would have been a horse of a different color. So to speak.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/5/13 at 1:52am

Thanks for your take, Blactor. As a white Jewish gay guy from the northeast I certainly saw a version of myself in the Jewish lawyer character, even with all the satirical stereotyping layered on top. Which is a very different thing than identifying with the Scottsboro 9.

Curious to know what Blactor thought of another "black" show written mostly by whites, THE COLOR PURPLE? (Not that I'm equating the 2 shows as works of theater art).

[chrisampm2]

Posted: 6/5/13 at 3:56am

Blactor, I appreciate your post but take issue with the idea that the piece has been musically "sanitized of its blackness." I understand your meaning but question how something can be sanitized by its own creators. What is the "authentic" Scottsboro Boys" music that's been white-washed?

Kander and Ebb and Thompson have given themselves an out by having the show take place in a "minstrel" musical context. Does the show not accurately reflect that genre of music? Are you saying the blues would be a more organic choice? Could be. But this show doesn't preclude someone else writing the story in a different style. It may be judged as insufficiently "black" but there's been no scrubbing away of musical blackness.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/5/13 at 7:50pm

Thank you, Blactor, for the usual, thoughtful response. I appreciate the answer to my question.

Chris, I can't speak for Blactor, but I think the score for SCOTTSBORO (which I find tuneful and even clever at times) is based on a form that even when it was created by blacks (the early decades: 1830-1850) was essentially written to conform to white stereotypes. Although it may have been invented by black performers, it's hard to call it a true "African-American" form. And for most of the years it was popular (up to 1910, per Wiki) it was created by white writers.

Some scholars would call those very early years an "African-American art form", but many would not.

(Before someone rushes to remind me that Irving Berlin wrote Christmas songs, I know. But the social and legal status of Jews and blacks were hardly equivalent. And the musical theater created by Jewish composers and librettists didn't usually exist to mock Jews in the way minstrel shows denigrated blacks.)