"The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk": Love, War, and Marc Chagallby Randi / February 1, 2018
It’s important to have queer stories, but I don’t think you should get points just for ticking a box — they actually have to be good. With “Moonlight”, a film about not only gay characters but black characters winning the Oscar last year (despite the Academy being old white men) (and despite the incredible initial mixup), and with “Call Me By Your Name” up for awards this weekend, our entertainment culture has maybe? hopefully? finally reached the point where it’s not enough to have token minority characters or storylines; they also have to be interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile too. And done with respect. I don’t think any form of inclusivity that seems done just for brownie points should be lauded as the pinnacle of inclusivity. In London right now, however, you still get the points for a paint-by-numbers queer story even if it’s super thin and amateur. Because everybody is indeed talking about “Jamie”, the new London musical, and Brits are loving it, but it is…how do I say…not very good.
Like I said, literally everyone else adores it. And it has a lot of the kind of fun that mass crowds love in things like “Mamma Mia!” – you know, the bright, loud, danceable shows. No one is bothered if the dialogue is cringey or the songs are uninspired if everyone is bopping in their seat. But I am, because I am always waiting for a great British score and, well, I’m still waiting. With the exception of Tim Minchin’s scores (the superb “Matilda”, “Groundhog Day”), British musical theatre has been in trouble since, well, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s heyday. That’s a long time to go with nothing of true substance to show for it. Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that in that time frame of literal decades of dreck was Elton John’s “Billy Elliot” score. Okay so Tim Minchin, Webs, and Elton John. I guess all the promising writers went to Broadway. And to think people are surprised when I explain that Broadway is on a whole nother playing field to the West End when it comes to musical theatre. I know it sounds mean but tell me what British-born original musical of the last decade or two has been of the high quality you would expect from one of the greatest theatre cities in the entire world. Because of this draught, I was so pumped for “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” because all I saw were rave reviews and I REALLY wanted London to have a great original musical finally that wasn’t a Broadway transfer. I wanted to fall in love with a brand-new score and listen to it until I memorized it and wait eagerly for it to go to Broadway. But this score is not that.
While it is outwardly fun — like there are bright colors and happy tunes and people dancing so the masses will be more than satisfied — and it is great to have the representation like this on such a stage and scale, I was just so unimpressed with the actual bones of the show. I wish I loved it, because it’s such a great story and it’s so important to show to people, especially young boys who identify with Jamie. I just wish such a great opportunity for representation came with quality writing.
It’s impossible not to compare this show to “Kinky Boots”. “Jamie”, to me, is about a production team that saw the enormous success of “Kinky Boots” all over the world and thought, ‘Hey, it seems that people really love stories about boys that don’t fit the traditional mold of masculinity, and the psychology that informs their decisions and how it affects the NOPE WAIT IT’S JUST ABOUT BOYS DRESSING UP AS GIRLS THAT’S IT WE WILL DO THAT!’ There was such potential in developing stories inspired by such departures from traditional male roles, but instead they seemed to mine the most asinine humor from it with a sort of baseline effort.
“Jamie” is about a teenage boy named Jamie who is living in a small English town where the accents are such that everyone pronounces his name ‘Jeh-meh’ and he is wayyy toooo faaaabulous for it. He wants to be a drag queen, and his loving but one-dimensional mother supports him, and his classmates and friends seem to find it cool, except for one of the typical asshole boys who thinks he is macho but is really obviously fragile in his masculinity. And his absentee father doesn’t approve but he was never really in his life or wanting to be. Okay, cool, Jamie, go be a drag queen, you are beautiful so you will be great at it. This is all clear in the first five minutes, though, and it’s very formulaic. Even formulaic setups could make great shows if they are handled well, but the remaining hours of the show feel just like filler, and on an amateur level. They fill it with the local drag shop (I’m sorry, what towns in rural England have entire shops for drag queens?) run by a great drag queen from the past named Loco Chanelle, a really low-effort drag name, who sings a very, VERY unnecessary and cringe-worthy song about his past and how he killed his lover maybe??, and it gets a goddamn REPRISE??? They fill it with a stern, annoying teacher who has a serious problem with Jamie’s breaking out of the straight lines she wants boys and girls to stay inside. Her outdated beliefs are only a tiny bit easier to believe than the fact that a school teacher in a tiny town has Christian Louboutin heels, another thing that is mentioned ostensibly to help the writers reach their word limit. And they fill it with bad music.
I hate writing this, because I do like liking things, and I want to love everything musical theatre so badly. Even with a lackluster book, if a show has fun or lovely or even just original music, that’s a win. But this score is complete cringe. The trite, derivative lyrics stick in your head, so it has that going for it. There’s the title song, where everyone jumps around like they’re at a rave and yells “Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie!” The melody is exactly how you are imagining it. I don’t even know if that song had other lyrics. The opening number, the one that has to set the tone for the whole show, is called, “And You Don’t Even Know It”, and it just says a phrase and then repeats “And you don’t even know it” over and over and over. “You’re a star! And you don’t even know it! Mini bar! And you don’t even know it!” Okay I made that last lyric up but you get the picture. I LOVE loved (sarcasm) the big ‘I Want’ number of the show, called “Spotlight”, where Jamie’s classmates sang of him “Out of the darkness, into the spotlight, out of the darkness, into the spotlight.” In that one was the part when I realized ‘ohhh this is going to be terrrrible’ — when the female classmates were sitting at a table doing the cups thing from ‘Pitch Perfect’ to the melody, the stupid thing you learn at summer camp when you’re little and somehow Anna Kendrick made cool? Anyway, the girls were doing that as accompaniment and my eyes got stuck in the back of my head. Then, ohh man, my favorite, the big runway catwalk number called “Work of Art” where everyone sang of Jamie (I’m sensing a redundant theme) about how he’s a work of art: “Mona Lisa isn’t she sir, work of art” was one lyric that I almost screamed at. I just…listen, not everything has to have Sondheim-level lyrics, but at least some effort would be appreciated.
Oh my real favorite part was when the mother had one of her hackneyed ballads about how she would do things differently if she met herself again (title of song: “If I Met Myself Again” picture 1000 eye roll emojis) and I SHIT YOU NOT, two dancers were BREAKDANCING during it. DURING A SAD BALLAD. It wasn’t ballet-like emotional dancing to the slow music; it was literally breakdancing to a nonexistent rhythm as though someone somewhere were scratching a record and Jason Mendoza was patiently waiting for the beat to drop but it never would. I looked around me in the darkness for the Punk’d cameras. I have never been so flabbergasted at direction choices. Man alive.
The only real conflict is for Jamie to get enough nerve to go onstage in his dress and not let the stupidest kid in school or the father that abandoned him get to him. That this super-confident, quick-witted boy would waste a moment thinking about what the mean boy in school thought of him was hard to believe, but okay, everyone has bullies in high school and it’s hard to deal with. But is this so-tiny-it’s-hard-to-even-call-him-a-minor-character really the only source of external conflict? To make up for that, Jamie fights with his mother for no good reason, and his mother sings a song about how he’s her boy (called “He’s My Boy”) and the audience was supposed to cry but it was forcing drama onto a cotton candy cloud that vanished into thin air as soon as pressure was applied to it.
Almost every character was stereotyped and lacking any semblance of nuance. I couldn’t believe that this show got this far without people editing it to bring it into the best shape possible. Or at least shape enough to run around the block. Only one character wasn’t completely clichéd and stereotyped, because it is one of the first appearances of such a character in musical theatre. Jamie’s best friend is a Muslim girl named Pritti (played by Lucie Shorthouse) who wears a hijab. As far as I know this is new, and this is minority representation this show deserves to be commended for. Lucie is the only character that gets to shine, aside from Jamie. She gets the one song in the show that didn’t make me want to tear my hair out, called “It Means Beautiful”, about the Arabic equivalent of the name Jamie. It’s not a great melody and the lyrics don’t live up to the nice sentiment that gives rise to the song (i.e., Pritti telling Jamie that he is indeed beautiful and look Arabic proves it), but still, it was decent. Lucie unfortunately does annoying popstar styling with her voice throughout the song, where she kind of catches the sound during held notes (something the director, if he exists, should have stopped) but she is really talented.
And Jamie himself shines bright. John McCrea has real star quality shining through even this pile. He stands out physically, a lithe, otherworldly-blonde, pale young man who regularly shows off how incredibly flexible he is. He manages to imbue the dullness with pops of vigor here and there, usually by doing an impossibly high kick in heels. He delivers one of the only lines that made me laugh – a bit where he’s trying to climb out the bathroom window and the mean teacher asks what he thinks he’s doing and he says “…Parkour??” That actually cracked me up. I hope that John gets a role in the future that is actually worthy of his talent.
Although I’m pretty sure he’s happy with this one. Everyone seems to be loving it.
Aside from the horrendous, actively bad score, the book is a mess as well. There is way too much of everything (so much attention to the drag queen, the teacher, the father, the friends) and yet not enough of those things to make it worthwhile, no real sense of understanding what they are trying to accomplish. And as if this storyline didn’t feel straight out of 1992 enough, there are outdated jokes peppering the book scenes, like talk of how all Kim Kardashian does is wear heels. It’s so low-effort.
OH so part of the nonexistent conflict is that the mean boy calls Jamie a ‘minger’ and Jamie is destroyed by it. So I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it was bad because it was basically the only real drama. Non-British people will likely not understand that part when they see it, but they are going to hate it anyway so whatever. So after the show I text my English friend “hey what does minga mean” because see I heard it with the accent, and she pretty much died laughing. She explained that it’s a very British way of calling someone skanky, like so skanky that no one would ever want to sleep with them. I thanked her for explaining it and then threw a glass at the wall in my fury over a musical basing all of its conflict over something so trivial as a boy calling another boy this word, as if Jamie, our unstoppable protagonist, would actually care that this idiot football player called him that.
Luckily the end sucked, with redemption of the white male asshole because who doesn’t love forgiveness that isn’t deserved. At least I guess we should try to redeem asshole children, who still have a chance to do some good, but I’m pretty sure that kid is going to remain a jerk forever. I’m angry that this disappointing show dragged (no pun intended) for almost three freaking hours. This isn’t “Les Mis”, people! And I’m angry and uncomfortable that a show that is professing to fill the niche of queer and inclusive art can still manage to be so sexist. There’s very often that unspoken but obvious thought that ‘we can’t be sexist towards women; we’re gay!’ and it’s definitely happening here. Its treatment of gender says while men like Jamie can cross gender lines and break down barriers, women shall remain in their supporting positions of the men around them. You may be thinking that there’s not a lot of good they can do for the women when this is a story about this one boy, but they manage to do a whole lot of bad, so. The girls in his school face a constant barrage of sexism from the male classmates, from being shown dicks they don’t want to see from dicks they don’t want to bother with, to being harassed with talk about how the boys will ‘drill’ them (they say ‘drilling’ a lot) whenever they want. And it’s a total Law & Order: SVU situation: The treatment is obviously bad, but it’s there not to serve as an example of bad behavior, but to serve as an example of what is considered normal. That pisses me off and it’s dangerous to include it in the show’s world as unnecessary examples of normalcy.
When the last musical assault on my ears and brain ended, the entire audience shot up to their feet quicker than I’ve ever seen. I guess when all the modern original musical work in your country is kind of on this level, you don’t expect, or get, any better.
AUDIENCE
The two old ladies in front of me were brushing their hair. One fumbled around her purse during the opening number, brought out a big brush, and brushed her hair, probably 100 strokes. Then she gave it to her friend. I can’t with people.
The best part of this show was the bubble tea I got next door afterwards.
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Translations at the National Theatre: Harrowing Tale of Ireland & England
Man alive, if you didn’t hate England after last week’s election, you definitely will after seeing Translations, the classic play by Brian Friel that is basically the stage version of the quote “You be careful out among them English.” (The actual quote is ‘the English’ but most people remember it as ‘them English’ because it’s so much better.) Translations tells of the folk who run and attend a hedge school in the Irish community of Baile Beag in 1833. They seem to be having a grand old time learning and living their lives, until the English military comes in supposedly to map their area and record the right translations of the farm-county names. But you can’t trust the English, as they come to know, and as the ‘translations’ become ‘renaming’ their locales, and as ‘renaming’ becomes, well, executing English military control. With well realized characters and a captivating style and story, Translations is a fantastic show and this revival could not be better.
So, your first question first: a hedge school (according to our friend wikipedia because I never heard the term before) was a small informal (and I guess illegal?) school that secretly educated kids from ‘non-conforming faiths’ (catholic and presby/anything but Anglican). They generally provided rudimentary primary school education for children – historians estimate for up to 400,000 students by the 1820s. Sometimes, they provided a higher level of education, and our hedge school run by Manus (Seamus O’Hara) and Hugh (Ciaran Hinds, heyyyy) seemed a mix of both: their students shout out the Greek or Latin etymologies of words used in regular conversation, they quote the Aeneid and the Odyssey, they talk of Greek mythology like they are friends with the gods (and at least our loony old man student Jimmy Jack (Dermot Crowley) believed he was), but then they also work on their times tables. So a general school of all things, and eventually, because of the damn English, a school of hard knocks?
When the English arrive with their mapmaking plan, their translator for the local language is Owen (Fra Fee, one of the best names), Hugh’s son and Manus’s brother, back after years establishing himself in the big cities. Owen doesn’t seem to mind erasing interesting old Irish names, with histories that locals like to share with each other so someone remembers, for English-friendly boring shit like White Plains and River Cross or whatever bullshit they came up with to replace like Billarendy Kragger. While he seems to be missing any respect for where he came from in his desire to change/better himself and his country, his partner in mapcrime, Lieutenant Yolland (Jack Bardoe), has a well-meaning but overly romanticized notion of ‘loving’ Ireland and the language, and the two surprising positions make for interesting subtle conflict. I also loved the subtle showing of the students feeling inferior and uneducated in front of the Englishmen since they couldn’t speak English, despite their ability to talk about the Greek gods and Latin poets and word origins like its nothing and despite the Englishmen’s inability to even recognize a Latin phrase. How did this assumption that English people are smarter begin? That’s some white nonsense.
Making for not so subtle conflict is the romance between the Lootellan and Maire, my hair twin, who always seemed destined to marry Manus but things a-change when the English come a-courting. Unforch for all, the Lootellan goes missing, and his military buddies, like all military buddies, are not happy and so they threaten increasing amounts of action/crime/murder until he is found, the gd fascists. The rapid development of drama and terror in act two is alarming, especially since it so worryingly relates to those in power today. The final image is so harrowing, earning a rare ‘faaaaak’ from me in the blackout before curtain call.
But aside from the distress of connecting the action to our crumbling society, Translations is terrific theatre. All the acting was strong, and some of my favorites I didn’t even mention yet (like the mute-but-working-on-it Sarah, played by Liadan Dunlea). With perfect timing, there was so much unexpected humor, and laugh-out-loud moments with the back-and-forth translations. The world they created was full, absorbing, and epic-feeling right off the bat, and it felt important, especially in trying to understand English history. I feel like this is the show for Irish people who felt overlooked by The Ferryman.
INFORMATION
Unfortunately, this ends its run tomorrow, December 18. but there are tickets available for tonight and tomorrow night so hop to it.
This is playing in the Olivier theatre inside the National Theatre (there are a few theatres in there).
DO NOT bring bags bigger than like a sheet of paper? About? Or they give you shit and might make you check it. Luckily I remembered and brought a little bag.
Act one is one hour and 20 minutes. Act two is under an hour and the 7:30pm curtain ended at 10:05pm.
There are toilets on the mezzanine level between the stalls doors level and the circle doors level, and these are always crowded because the people going up to the circle don’t realize that there are more toilets once you enter the circle doors and it’s awesomeeee. If you know. which I do. I also think the circle is better for this theatre because it’s a GD BARN (enormous) and you get a better view. Also if you sit in the front row of the circle your view begins at the tip of the stage, which is incredible for my blood pressure because it means you can’t see anyone in the stalls using their phones, the English bastards.
Also at one end of the circle bar now there’s a water machine for filling your bottles or cups! Whee! The line for that at the interval was longer than the bar line which like good for the world but bad for me.
“The Scottsboro Boys” in the West End: As Important to See As Ever, And As Great
Apologies if this is inappropriate when discussing such a serious show, but “The Scottsboro Boys” is like an off-the-rails Stefon sketch (but heavy-hearted). “It has everything: racism, rape, abusive prison guards, an Uncle Sam cracker, blackface, suicide, jokes about New Yorkers, Jew money, quitter minstrels…” “Quitter minstrels?” “It’s that thing of when black actors putting on a horribly racist minstrel show refuse to play along with the white ringleader any longer when the truth becomes too much to bear.”
“The Scottsboro Boys” really does present all of this and much more, in a gut-wrenching, unnerving portrayal of the heart-breaking true story. Actually, it doesn’t have one of the above-listed items: rape. “The Scottsboro Boys” tells the true and depressing story about 9 young black men and boys who were falsely accused of rape in 1931, by two white “Alabama ladies” who were trying to get out of being caught themselves for sneaking onto a train. In our modern society (which is pretty much the same on this issue as it has been throughout history because nothing has improved, really), it’s hard to latch on to the subject of women lying about sexual assault, since that happens only maybe 0.03% of the time yet is argued to be the case 100% of the time.
But the case of the Scottsboro Boys was one of those few times when it was indeed made up, when the allegations were completely and totally false, and it was easy to figure out that the entire years-long, hard-fought battle was a product of the south’s fostered racism. Alabama, where the boys were arrested and imprisoned for so many years, had a regime of punishing black people for no reason and it didn’t want to give up. And no matter how hard the north, the non-corrupt members of the judiciary, and even the Supreme Court wanted to change this regime, the south would not could not would never back down willingly from its tyranny.
Sounds like a perfect idea for a musical, right? Well it is. There’s a stupid stereotype about Broadway musicals out there, that they are pretty much live Disney princess movies where everything is happy and the music comes from people breaking into song due to happiness. People who think this way have probably not seen a musical in a theatre in the past 40 years or so. The majority of great musicals tell complicated stories. The format enhances storytelling of all sorts because, as no one could deny, music has the ability to convey all kinds of emotions and thoughts better than merely speaking can. “The Scottsboro Boys” works as a musical because we think it shouldn’t. The creative team (including music by Kander & Ebb) took this awful, depressing story of our actual history and made a musical version one would never expect: a minstrel show. In this manner, the story becomes even more grotesque and upsetting. The framing device, of a group of black actors telling this tale with high-stepping songs and big smiles (at least in the beginning), lets the audience see even more clearly how disgusting not just this story but all of America’s racist history (and present) is. Some of the songs done in the minstrel fashion are supposed to make you smile and then make you shudder in horror at the fact that you just smiled.
The show is difficult to get through at times, but it’s so worth it. We’ve heard endless awful stories coming out of this time period, but this one really hits you and hurts, due to how familiar and close we get with the characters. The talent on that stage is impressive, and nearly half the actors come from the original Broadway cast. I did not know this going in, because I am a Broadway snob and I assumed that if people I should know were over here, then I’d know it. I am a fool. A fool! The two main minstrels, Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, are played by Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon. BOTH from the original Broadway cast, BOTH were nominated for featured actor Tony awards. I mean. I just had a momentary slip I guess. I was almost surprised to realize that McClendon was playing Mr. Tambo because his accent was sooo weird, so off-putting. I blamed it on the difficulty I’ve seen too much over here, of British actors butchering an American accent, then taken 4 steps further to make it Southern and comical. But he’s American. I guess it just works for the character but I wanted him to stop! The other original cast member was one of my faves – James T. Lane (who is from Philly and is my new friend), who does double duty as one of the boys and as one of the accusers, along with English actor Dex Lee. Even the White Man (or the Interlocutor), sort of running the minstrel show, is played by Julian Glover. Like, huge British actor that some people in the audience came specifically to see. I had no idea.
The main character is Haywood Patterson, a deep, illiterate, and pessimistic young man who based his life on always telling the truth, an ironic commitment here when telling the truth begets further punishment. While he’s sadly not portrayed by (the awesome and superb) Joshua Henry, the original Broadway cast member who was nominated for a Tony, he’s played by Brandon Victor Dixon, who originated the role off-Broadway and who is actually the one on the recording. (Side note: the off-Broadway company got a recording, so it wasn’t deemed necessary for the Broadway production. But now the London cast is getting a recording! Meaning, it’s pretty much the same people now because of Dixon in the lead again…conclusion, poor Joshua Henry.) Dixon was in “Motown: The Musical” last year and was nominated for “The Color Purple” back with ‘Tasia so he’s prettayyyy great. I just don’t know how I missed all this coming in.
We watch Haywood become a natural leader of this group of strangers, who eventually become more like brothers. We watch as one of the other boys teaches Haywood how to read and write. (This scene could have been more touching, but it was written extremely oddly – mostly about boobs and which letters look like them (spoiler: all of them?). It was very out of place.) Haywood is the character you most connect with and feel for, as his vow to uphold truth backfires in this corrupt judicial system, as he loses the chance to see his mother one last time, as he becomes the last one in prison.
I didn’t really just spoil it, saying that the others eventually get out of prison. There’s no happy ending, and it still takes many, many years before the youngest are first freed. As we learn in a sort of epilogue, freedom doesn’t do much, as their lives have already been destroyed. Most take their own lives, actively or passively letting themselves wither away instead of dealing with the world that knowingly did this to them. Haywood, who could have gotten paroled if he lied and admitted the crime, would never abandon his morals and instead died in jail. Yeah it’s a terrible damn story but it’s important to see. At times I actually had flashes of the thought “damn, I wish courts today paid half as much attention to sexual assault cases.” But the court didn’t give a damn about the supposed victims, or they would have actually listened to them when they recanted their false accusations. They just wanted to punish black people. That’s seriously what happened, and not that long ago either. It’s terrifying, and sad, and somehow the musical context enhances its poignancy. At the end, we learn from a movie-style written credit that the governor of Alabama officially pardoned the boys in 2013. Because the musical called attention to his state’s shitty history, not to pardon all the thousands of innocent black people who were and are victimized in similar ways. At least this story, when told in this very effective fashion, can elucidate the struggle that is still occurring. In that way, it’s a must-see.
Sounds like a perfect idea for a musical, right? Well it is. There’s a stupid stereotype about Broadway musicals out there, that they are pretty much live Disney princess movies where everything is happy and the music comes from people breaking into song due to happiness. People who think this way have probably not seen a musical in a theatre in the past 40 years or so. The majority of great musicals tell complicated stories. The format enhances storytelling of all sorts because, as no one could deny, music has the ability to convey all kinds of emotions and thoughts better than merely speaking can. “The Scottsboro Boys” works as a musical because we think it shouldn’t. The creative team (including music by Kander & Ebb) took this awful, depressing story of our actual history and made a musical version one would never expect: a minstrel show. In this manner, the story becomes even more grotesque and upsetting. The framing device, of a group of black actors telling this tale with high-stepping songs and big smiles (at least in the beginning), lets the audience see even more clearly how disgusting not just this story but all of America’s racist history (and present) is. Some of the songs done in the minstrel fashion are supposed to make you smile and then make you shudder in horror at the fact that you just smiled.
The show is difficult to get through at times, but it’s so worth it. We’ve heard endless awful stories coming out of this time period, but this one really hits you and hurts, due to how familiar and close we get with the characters. The talent on that stage is impressive, and nearly half the actors come from the original Broadway cast. I did not know this going in, because I am a Broadway snob and I assumed that if people I should know were over here, then I’d know it. I am a fool. A fool! The two main minstrels, Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, are played by Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon. BOTH from the original Broadway cast, BOTH were nominated for featured actor Tony awards. I mean. I just had a momentary slip I guess. I was almost surprised to realize that McClendon was playing Mr. Tambo because his accent was sooo weird, so off-putting. I blamed it on the difficulty I’ve seen too much over here, of British actors butchering an American accent, then taken 4 steps further to make it Southern and comical. But he’s American. I guess it just works for the character but I wanted him to stop! The other original cast member was one of my faves – James T. Lane (who is from Philly and is my new friend), who does double duty as one of the boys and as one of the accusers, along with English actor Dex Lee. Even the White Man (or the Interlocutor), sort of running the minstrel show, is played by Julian Glover. Like, huge British actor that some people in the audience came specifically to see. I had no idea.
The main character is Haywood Patterson, a deep, illiterate, and pessimistic young man who based his life on always telling the truth, an ironic commitment here when telling the truth begets further punishment. While he’s sadly not portrayed by (the awesome and superb) Joshua Henry, the original Broadway cast member who was nominated for a Tony, he’s played by Brandon Victor Dixon, who originated the role off-Broadway and who is actually the one on the recording. (Side note: the off-Broadway company got a recording, so it wasn’t deemed necessary for the Broadway production. But now the London cast is getting a recording! Meaning, it’s pretty much the same people now because of Dixon in the lead again…conclusion, poor Joshua Henry.) Dixon was in “Motown: The Musical” last year and was nominated for “The Color Purple” back with ‘Tasia so he’s prettayyyy great. I just don’t know how I missed all this coming in.
We watch Haywood become a natural leader of this group of strangers, who eventually become more like brothers. We watch as one of the other boys teaches Haywood how to read and write. (This scene could have been more touching, but it was written extremely oddly – mostly about boobs and which letters look like them (spoiler: all of them?). It was very out of place.) Haywood is the character you most connect with and feel for, as his vow to uphold truth backfires in this corrupt judicial system, as he loses the chance to see his mother one last time, as he becomes the last one in prison.
I didn’t really just spoil it, saying that the others eventually get out of prison. There’s no happy ending, and it still takes many, many years before the youngest are first freed. As we learn in a sort of epilogue, freedom doesn’t do much, as their lives have already been destroyed. Most take their own lives, actively or passively letting themselves wither away instead of dealing with the world that knowingly did this to them. Haywood, who could have gotten paroled if he lied and admitted the crime, would never abandon his morals and instead died in jail. Yeah it’s a terrible damn story but it’s important to see. At times I actually had flashes of the thought “damn, I wish courts today paid half as much attention to sexual assault cases.” But the court didn’t give a damn about the supposed victims, or they would have actually listened to them when they recanted their false accusations. They just wanted to punish black people. That’s seriously what happened, and not that long ago either. It’s terrifying, and sad, and somehow the musical context enhances its poignancy. At the end, we learn from a movie-style written credit that the governor of Alabama officially pardoned the boys in 2013. Because the musical called attention to his state’s shitty history, not to pardon all the thousands of innocent black people who were and are victimized in similar ways. At least this story, when told in this very effective fashion, can elucidate the struggle that is still occurring. In that way, it’s a must-see.
