“The Scottsboro Boys ” – a Musical by John Kander & Fred Ebb

The Scottsboro Boys – based on the book by David Thompson
Garrick Theatre until February 2015.

At times serious subjects which are caught in the tentacles of an energetic musical lose their grip. But this can’t be said about Susan Stroman’s adaptation of David Thompson book based on the true story of nine black teenagers wrongly convicted of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.

The audience receives an adrenalin shot which stays with them as the play races through its 105 minutes, barely pausing for breath, and our attention is held for every second. The story of racial injustice in America’s Deep South has parallels with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  The “Mockingbird” of justice for The Scottsboro Boys also comes, as it did for Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s book, posthumously when the audience learns at the end of the play that the state of Alabama pardoned the nine boys in 2013.

This former Broadway and Young Vic production cleverly adopts the style of a Minstrel show but this time all the white characters, symbolising the perpetrators of injustice, are played by black actors which is a great theatrical twist. Many of these roles are taken by Mr Bones and Mr Tambo who are played by Colman Domingo and Forest McClendon – these performances have equal amounts of both panache and irony.

The staging is magnificent with minimal use of props. Chairs, representing the electric chair of capital punishment (to which the boys had been condemned) balance on planks of wood to create the Chattanooga train.

The story is bleak and, as a spectator, one wished for some sort of reprieve. But the last scene of “The Lady” is hard hitting as she makes a final stand against racial prejudice.