Racial issues explored in musical at Signature

The cast of “The Scottsboro Boys” at Signature Theatre. [C Stanley Photography]

By David Siegel

“Strip me naked. Take my name. Make me an animal. So you can kill me. Then forget all about me. Like I never happened. Like I don’t matter.”

No, those unsettling words are not reactions to a racially charged recent Tweet from some supposed celebrity or a national elected official. They are words meant to jostle an audience into paying attention. They were composed in 2010.

Those words are dialogue spoken by the character Haywood Patterson (commandingly portrayed by Lamont Walker II), one of the nine Scottsboro Boys, in the in-your-face, challenging, and thought-provoking musical “The Scottsboro Boys” by John Kander and Fred Ebb with book by David Thompson. This show, based on historical events, is appearing at Signature Theatre through July 1.

With its subject matter, its dialogue, and especially its inflamed, unforgiving upbeat music and energy-rich minstrel choreographed stylizations and poses, the show is not meant to be timid. And, a minstrel setting for a show in this day and age, really?

“The Scottsboro Boys” is directed with civility and restraint by Joe Calarco. The production walks a fine line, becoming an unwavering production full of about 20 mostly prickly scenes that dare the audience to look away from the stage. Overall, it is a musical like a spur into a rib cage, or a burr under a saddle – especially now, as America grapples with its enormous divides about race and racism.

How timely; that opening night was the same day that the Washington Post ran this headline: “Most Americans say race relations are a major problem, but few discuss it with friends and family.”

Who were the real Scottsboro Boys? They were nine black teenagers (one only 12 at the time of arrest) accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in 1931. Was a fair trial possible? Well, no. They were found guilty and initially sentenced to death by electric chair, even with flimsy evidence and a recanted testimony from one of the original accusers.

The black youths were tried and retried multiple times. The case was national news. There was even an intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court. But, again and again, they were found guilty by Alabama juries. From these events, Kander, Ebb, and Thompson created “The Scottsboro Boys.”

With 18 musical numbers, some toe-tappers, under the music direction of Brian P. Whitted with a talented eight-member band and energy-rich choreography by Jared Grimes, the Signature production is awash with a lampooning minstrel style that takes on white supremacy while also alternating with more conventional theater devices.

Signature has an excellent cast of actors, singers, and dancers, with some of them portraying multiple characters, including women and white folk, Northerners and Southerners.

“The Scottsboro Boys” is also a show within a show that the cast and the creative team telegraph to the audience from its opening scene, as an older African-American woman known as The Lady (played by Felicia Curry) sitting in a bus, notices a detailed model of a closed theater.

She quickly becomes enveloped into the model as it opens to become the setting for the production. Another clue is the regular use of a theatrical framing device: The arch of the proscenium stage is moved about to become a gateway into the minstrel theater show and, at other times, the gateway to the real world. Daniel Conway is the scenic designer, with exquisitely evocative lighting design by Sherrice Mojgani.

How can the audience know how to take the many minstrel moments? That hinges on the audience listening closely to the dialogue and expressions of the actors. The Southern Gentleman Interlocutor, portrayed by Christopher Bloch, begins with this: “I’m host and interlocutor, the master of these folks.”

He then demands that the cast be seated. They at first comply, Soon the characters begin to question the Interlocutor’s authority. “Can we tell it like it really happened?” they ask. And from that question, the show takes off into its astounding arc with truth-telling as its weapon. And it is truth-telling while the show’s characters perform high kicks and strut a cake walk to find a way to survive under the gaze of the powerful. And then Darrell Purcell Jr., in his role as Scottsboro Boy Clarence Norris, states in no uncertain terms, “I’m gonna stand up like that one day! I’m gonna stare down that white man ’til he blinks!”

The truth-telling ends with a final powerful scene as the cast turns to face the audience as the music builds.

Several musical numbers to highlight include “Nothing” sung by Lamont Walker as Haywood about truth-telling as a weapon of honor; “Electric Chair,” a taunting nightmare to scare Eugene, (portrayed by Aramie Payton), who is sentenced to death; “Go Back Home,” a mournful ballad about lost lives seeking home again; and Walker’s “You Can’t Do Me,” an anthem of power taken back. “You can’t do me like you done me, Like you did me before,” the lyrics go. “I ain’t gonna take it anymore, I won’t stand still, my hands in my pocket. What was a whisper, is now a roar.”

If you are seeking a soft focus, gauzy fabric evening, or something to carry you back to some mythical age, then look elsewhere; “The Scottsboro Boys” is not for you.

Not every scene is powerful. Not every song is daring. Not all the comic antics, including eye-rolling routines from minstrel characters like Mr. Bones (Stephen Scott Wormley) and Mr. Tambo (Chaz Alexander Coffin) will do more than bring groans. But, for me, so what. In the current time, softness to combat coarseness does nothing for me.

“The Scottsboro Boys” is fearless and often haunting. Will it be a transformative experience? For many, that is doubtful. But damn, I am glad that over one and a-half years ago, Signature decided to produce it. The production fits well in these current days of rage. For me, I wanted to be sharply preached to; I wanted to see anger. I wanted words to be flames from those most affected. The timid does not feed my soul.


Where and when: “The Scottsboro Boys” runs nightly through July 1, except Mondays, at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. There are matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Purchase tickets online or call the box office, 703) 820-9771.

This review originally appeared in DC Metro Theater Arts.