The Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys was not the first musical I have seen, and certainly not the last. It was, however, a new experience to watch a musical from, what felt like, the sky. As a few people in the row behind me began to comment on how impossible it would be to see anything, I started to feel a little uncomfortable too. I was pleasantly surprised when the show began, and I felt that the eagle-eye view was better than from any other seat I could have asked for. So before beginning this review, I would like to thank Professor Bernstein and the Macaulay Honors College for setting our IDC classes up with such great seats to a spectacular performance.

“One-thousand laughs guaranteed,” the sign outside the Lyceum Theatre read. Skeptical at first, I kept this line in the back of my head. The dramatic entrance that the actors made caused my first laugh. Traditionally, you would see actors magically appear on stage after the lights come on, but the Scottsboro boys made their entrance from the rear of the auditorium. Breaking traditions was a recurring theme throughout the musical. The whole story is about nine young men being accused of a crime they never committed, and their fight to break the prejudice that plagued the United States in the 19th century. Other broken traditions included the use of men representing women, and blacks representing whites. It got exceptionally confusing when black men were presented as white women.

There was also another representation of a specific woman, which was not very obvious. For the audience (myself included) who thought that The Lady, who is present throughout the entire musical, was an angel, a ghost, or simply a witness, Rosa Parks elucidates her identity at the resolution of the show. It seems as though the director did not want her identity to be clear to everyone, because even the playbill had her character listed as “The Lady.”

I lost count of how many times I laughed, so I can neither testify, nor disprove, the 1000 laugh claim, but I can vouch that The Scottsboro Boys was a musical that would put a smile one anyone’s face. From the clever puns, to the ironic drama, the musical took the audience on a roller coaster of emotions that left them in awe of the spectacle beheld to them. The Scottsboro Boys was, in itself, a history lesson, as well as a great performance. The colorful costumes and set design, as well as music that would rival Broadway’s finest, only adorned an already fantastic story that left us all in awe, but did not leave us in spirit. It served as a great lesson on truth and honesty, as well as history and prejudice, and did it in a way that only a musical could – with laughter and entertainment.