Under the Strobe Lights: “The Scottsboro Boys” offers truth amidst triviality
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Are horrifying circumstances less horrifying when told to the tune of flighty banjos and predictable bass lines? It seems that in the musical The Scottsboro Boys, music and lyric writers John Kander and Fred Ebb were trying to find out just how much contradiction and unsettling revelation an audience can take willingly—and it seems that they’ve hit it right on the mark.
The show’s controversial subject matter may have been enough for some. Starting with the utilization of the minstrel show form (one of the most racist forms of theatre in American history), The Scottsboro Boys begins a true tale of brutal injustice with a thoroughly sardonic glimpse into the continual presence of racism, even as the events that the minstrel group portrays are portrayed in past-tense. The group of men creating this show-within-a-show—not incidentally consisting of all African-Americans, only led by a stereotypical “Southern Gentleman” who continually interrupts their heartfelt connection with the story—brings a relevance that makes the audience wonder just how removed the characters—as well as they themselves–are from the injustice that this story narrates.
Despite the condescending yells for interruptive dance routines and joyous distraction, the men continue on to weave a tale in which the audience finds it harder and harder to separate delight from disgust—a thoroughly unsettling concept, if it weren’t for the efforts of the composers to throw in “happy” chords and joyous percussion at every turn. Pieces such as “Electric Chair” are prime examples of this: in this piece, a fright-stricken boy is carried through the terrors of the chair that he will likely meet, as the tempo increases and the musicians frantically play their assigned major-mode parts. The juxtaposition of fear and joy doesn’t end here, though, as the once comically White jail-guards—played by other members of the Black minstrel group, of course—prance around in a bizarre display of joy over the imminent demise of the guilty-until-proven-innocent inmates, surrounded by dead bodies who re-animate just in time to re-enact their moment of truth under the strobe lights.
And as if this fantastic display of fear and exultation just wasn’t enough, we are often reminded that this story is not just a story: although assuredly less musical, this happened. Seventy-some-odd years ago, these nine boys underwent the abhorrent events of this garishly spectacular musical—a revelation that is not easy to dismiss, especially as the musical reaches its finale. Here, the audience is subjected to possibly the most unsettling part of the writers’ insight: here, all African-American members of the cast are portrayed using blackface makeup, a thoroughly grotesque representation that makes clear that even at the time that their show-within-a-show was being done, these actors were far from escaping the oppression that they so detested. Still, as the lights flash and the music continues to crescendo, the audience finds itself witnessing a total about-face in the show’s direction, and assignment of power—a tool that allows the musical to become more than just a revelation for an audience to undergo: The Scottsboro Boys, with all its glamour and terror, pizzazz and disgust, becomes an example with which the audience feels obliged to do more than just reflect upon…
No small feat for some banjos, building-block chairs, and a small group of men wiping some paint off of their faces.
