Guthrie Theater
Minneapolis
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
***
The Scottsboro Boys is an “upside-down minstrel show,” said Chris Hewitt in the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press. While those cheerfully racist 19th-century song-and-dance acts usually featured white men in blackface, the final collaboration between composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb uses an all-black cast to tell a true and tragic story. The Scottsboro Boys were nine young African-American men who, in the 1930s, were falsely convicted of raping white women in Alabama. In this show, contrary to the usual conventions of minstrelsy, these men are allowed to “retain their dignity.” Instead, the ones who come across as “exaggerated buffoons” are the white judges, jailers, and lawyers who allowed racism to triumph. Inverting the expectations of the genre while stealing its look and feel is a risky gimmick, but it pays off, as The Scottsboro Boys pointedly underscores “what was really turned on its head” in the actual case—that is, the ideal of justice.
Still, The Scottsboro Boys sometimes suffers from an inappropriate tone, said Graydon Royce in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Some audience members may find it hard to accept that “a minstrel show built on winks and smiles” can truly pay honor to nine real-life victims of institutionalized racism. The song “Electric Chair” uses tap dancing to mimic the “panic of electrocution,” while the upbeat “That’s Not the Way We Do Things” stingingly “satirizes Northern liberal guilt.” Such numbers tread a thin line between wit, showmanship, and bad taste. Fortunately, director Susan Stroman navigates those pitfalls with absolute precision. Seldom has “the cruel whim of racism” been presented in so entertaining—or disturbing—a package.
-
Weapons: Julia Garner stars in 'hyper-eerie' psychological thrillerThe Week Recommends Zach Cregger's 'top notch' new film opens with 17 children disappearing at exactly the same time
-
Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
-
Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
-
If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.