Nachtland - Review

Young Vic, London

*****

Written by Marius von Mayenburg

Translated by Maja Zade

Directed by Patrick Marber

Jane Horrocks

Nachtland is an intriguing, brilliantly delivered examination of post-Holocaust German identity. 

Philipp and Nicola (John Heffernan and Dorothea Myer-Bennett) are brother and sister meeting in the house of their recently deceased father to clear his belongings.

Opening with typical sibling squabbles over who had cared the most for their father in his decline, their dynamic soon shifts on the discovery of a framed picture in the attic that on close inspection, is found to be one of Adolf Hitler’s early watercolour paintings. The drama quickly evolves into an exploration of base greed, as the siblings engage Evamaria (Jane Horrocks) to verify the artwork’s provenance with a view to realising its value, contrasted with the emotional agonies of Philippa’s Jewish wife Judith (Jenna Augen), who is appalled at the siblings’ crass materiality in their exploiting an artefact of Hitler. 

Marius von Maayerburg’s genius (expertly translated by Maja Zade) lies in his crafting of brilliantly worded arguments that never once fall into maudling or simplistic explanations, but rather outline the ongoing traumatic legacy of the Holocaust and its impact upon modern Jewish identity - and counterpointing this impact with the blunt disinterested disconnection of Judith’s in-laws.

The second half of this ninety minute one-act work introduces Angus Wright as Kahl, a would-be purchaser of the painting and Nazi sympathiser, who is found to be a vile misogynist. Throw in a small turn from Gunnar Cauthery as Nicola’s husband Fabian who contracts tetanus in picking out nails from the picture’s antique frame and the evening’s sextet is complete.

The writing is brilliant, the cast is flawless and as the evening evolves, occasional pockets of humour lead to a final act that is both harrowing and shocking. Anna Fleischle’s deceptively mind-bending set is the perfect complement to Patrick Marber’s assured and deft direction.

With occasional musical interludes ranging from Bowie to Beethoven and Mahler, Nachtland is outstanding theatre.

Runs until 20th April

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz

The Homecoming - Review

Young Vic Theatre, London

****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Matthew Dunster

Jared Harris

Matthew Dunster’s revival of The Homecoming is one of the most entertaining interpretations of Pinter to have graced a London stage in years.  In this definitively dysfunctional family, a cracking cast offer up a monstrous quintet of generation-spanning brothers and the one woman who is wife/in-law/niece to them all.

Harold Pinter’s dialogue is genius. Written in 1964, he captures the essence of London banter. Listen closely to hear how Pinter influenced the likes of Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son, Leon Griffiths’ Arthur Daley and Barrie Keefe’s Harold Shand. His are the words and style of Hackney and of Soho, refracted through this family’s amoral prism.

The elder generation is neatly portrayed by the Arthur Lowe-esque Nicholas Tennant as chauffeur Sam, with his brother Max (Jared Harris) a retired butcher and the father of the three younger brothers, attempting to play the patriarch of the household.

Among the next generation Joe Cole is pimp Lenny, David Angland is the brain-dulled boxer Joey, as Robert Emms plays Teddy, the PhD of this fraternal trio who has flown home from America with wife Ruth (Lisa Diveney)

All six are magnificent, shifting us from laughter to gasps of horror as the men attempt to impose their macabre misogyny upon Ruth - who in turn proves to be an equally devious foil to their vile intentions. 

Throughout the evening, Sally Ferguson’s lighting plots enhance the drama on Moi Tran’s simply suggested set.

The Homecoming is a finely crafted glimpse into a household of grotesques, making an evening of fabulous theatre. 

Runs until 27th January 2024

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Further Than The Furthest Thing - Review

Young Vic Theatre, London

*

Written by Zinnie Harris

Directed by Jennifer Tang

Jenna Russell

If ever Arts Council England require reasons to justify their axing of funds for London projects, they need look no further than the Young Vic’s current revival of Zinnie Harris’ 1999 play, Further Than The Furthest Thing. 

As an exploration of exploitation, the story is a tedious study in how a remote island community is destroyed by the evil wider world. Drawn from the 1960s history of Tristan da Cunha, this production could have been so much more. Indeed, the supporting essays in the programme make for an excellent read.

It turns out that the essays are better than the production itself, for what Harris and director Jennifer Tang offer is overblown and lengthy with disappointingly two-dimensional characters. The usually brilliant designer Soutra Gilmour offers up a set that inexplicably (and quite possibly expensively) spins on the Young Vic’s revolve at a pace that’s as lethargic as the narrative. If Harris’ script had been filleted as ruthlessly as the island’s harvested crawfish then it might, just might, have had the potential to be an hour-long radio play. That around a third of the audience vanished at the interval is one of life’s easier to solve mysteries.

Jenna Russell, as always, delivers a top-notch performance. It is only a shame that the material she has to work with is so trite and dire. Further Than The Furthest Thing ain’t far enough for this dismal disappointment.

Runs until 29th April

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Oklahoma! - Review

Young Vic, London

*****

Music by Richard Rodgers

Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs

Directed by Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein

Patrick Vaill

In one of the most stunning interpretations of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical to hit London in recent years, Daniel Fish’s interpretation of Oklahoma! crosses the Atlantic to open at the Young Vic. Fish developed his take on the show as a student production for Bard College in 2015. Three years later the show was to play Off-Broadway at New York’s St Ann’s Warehouse, before reaching Broadway in 2019 where it picked up eight Tony nominations with two wins including Best Musical Revival. Fish is accompanied at the helm by fellow director Jordan Fein.

Oklahoma! may hail from the Golden Age of Broadway but Fish’s vision is lean, simplistic and stripped back. Played almost in the round on a stage of bare timber, plywood and trestle tables, the only scenic enhancements are a sketched out backdrop of prairie farmland, with racks of rifles mounted high around the remaining the remaining three sides of the thrust performance space. Terese Wadden’s costumes are simple cowboy-chic with Levis de-rigeur for most, ranch chaps prevalent for the men and an array of purty frocks for the women as the scenes demand.

Amidst this simplicity of staging, the production has to stand solely on the strengths of its actors – and the troupe assembled here are amongst the finest musical theatre companies in town. Arthur Darvill and Anoushka Lucas lead as the hesitant lovers Curly and Laurey. Both are immaculate in their roles, with many of Curly’s numbers down sized to Darvill singing accompanied only by his own solo guitar playing. Powerful lighting plots wash some of the verses in The Surrey With The Fringe On Top and People Will Say We’re In Love into impassioned love scenes, never previously contemplated mid-number. It’s a bold move by the directors and lighting designer Scott Zielinski that is strikingly effective. There is boldness too in Daniel Kluger’s orchestrations of Richard Rodgers’ score that the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organisation have shrewdly seen fit to approve and which allows Musical Director Tom Brady to see his 9-piece band having more guitars than violins. With the musicians on stage, the new orchestrations give a powerfully Western twang added to the original, that only enhances the evening.

Arthur Darvill and Anoushka Lucas

The musical magic of this production however lies not just in its leads, nor in its creative enhancements, but in the extraordinary talent assembled around them in the featured roles and here follows a roll-call of excellence.

Lisa Sadovy as Aunt Eller is everything her character should be – and then some more. Fish and Fein play fast and loose with the show’s structure and where we may have expected the first act to conclude with Laurey’s Dream Ballet, itself preceded by a soprano chorus singing Out Of My Dreams, it is Aunt Eller who here kicks off the second act of the show with that number, before the ballet gets underway. It’s an innovative shake-up of the show that works. And in mentioning the ballet, a note of massive praise to Marie-Astrid Mence who mesmerizingly dances the solo work.

Next up on this roll-call is Marisha Wallace as Ado Annie Carnes. Wallace is simply sensational. For sure, Ado Annie provides welcome moments of comic relief in the narrative but Wallace immerses herself in the woman to provide a portrayal of her character that is more fleshed out than the typical two-dimensional comic-book portrayals of Ado Annie, so often seen in the past. Not only is Wallace’s acting out of this world, her vocals take the Young Vic’s roof off too. One to watch for next year’s Olivier nominations.

Ranking alongside Wallace in talent and impact are two actors who have travelled with the show from Broadway. James Davis’ Will Parker is again a thoughtfully presented delivery of a comedy classic. Davis’ hapless bungling, matched only by his character's  blinkered love for Ado Annie is simply a delight to watch.

Patrick Vaill has also crossed the pond with the show, with an even more intriguing pedigree connecting him to the production. His involvement incredibly dates back to 2015 when he was a student at Bard, creating this iteration of Jud Fry for Fish. Vaill’s Jud is extraordinary, taking this most complex of the canon’s villains and imbuing him with an unexpected tender sympathy. We find Jud to be “othered” by the community around him, culminating in his shocking death and while Jud clearly has a monstrous past, Vaill creates an intriguing, credible, complexity to the man, that has to be seen to be believed. Vocally magnificent too, Vaill’s turn leaves a deep and troubling imprint on the audience. A combination of contrasting light, blackout and video projections add an equally ingenious twist to the interaction between Curly and Jud.

Stavros Demetraki is a delight as pedlar Ali Hakim. His is a simple role to play in the narrative, oiling the story’s comedic wheels. Like all good comedy however, the role demands perfection in its timing and delivery and Demetraki hits his marks with pinpoint accuracy.

Another casting gem sees a grizzled Greg Hicks playing gnarled farmer Andrew Carnes, administering what Quentin Tarantino might have called 'frontier justice' in the show’s finale. It’s a troubling moment for the audience to reflect on, but Hicks delivers it with his hallmark first-class standards.

Producers Sonia Friedman and Michael Harrison have shrewdly backed this production, so one can only hope for its deserved West End transfer. Until then, at the Young Vic, Oklahoma! remains unmissable.

Runs until 25th June 2022

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Scottsboro - My Journey to Alabama

The sign above the platform at Scottsboro Railroad Station

This weekend sees Kander and Ebb's The Scottsboro Boys come to the sold-out end of its acclaimed West End run, a troubling yet brilliant show that first stunned London back in December 2013 at the Young Vic. I knew nothing of this chapter of American history before seeing Susan Stroman's production, but I was to leave the Young Vic stunned by the musical's technical and stylish genius and deeply moved by its tragic tale.

My journey to Scottsboro actually began in autumn last year. The show was about to transfer to the West End's Garrick Theatre and I had been invited to interview flown-over Broadway star James T. Lane, together with whirlwind New York impresario Catherine Schreiber who (along with Paula Marie Black and the Young Vic) was producing. As our conversation ended and the microphone was switched off, a chance remark led me to mention to Catherine that I had an impending business trip to visit clients across the USA. As I outlined my intinerary, Schreiber commented that one of the towns on my route was barely an hour's drive from Scottsboro and how I must visit the museum that marks the Scottsboro Boys' story. She made the necessary introductions and very soon I was in touch with the museum's founder and director, Shelia Washington.  

So it was that one overcast October morning last year I found myself deep in America's Deep South, driving along Alabama's stretch of the Lee Highway and heading for Scottsboro. My car's GPS (sat-nav) suggested that I detour from the fast route and follow the last ten miles into town along an old country lane that hugged the tracks of the Southern Railroad line. The show’s New York cast recording (a London recording is to be released soon) was playing in the car and as trees, track and churches sped by, the emotional power of heading towards that humble Southern town, now stained with one of the last century's most terrible miscarriages of justice, became quite overpowering. I could not have guessed that I was shortly to experience one of the most humbling and inspirational days of my life. 

Writing in The Guardian two years ago, Ed Pilkington succinctly describes the events that led to the arrest of the Scottsboro Boys.

Paradoxically, the Scottsboro Nine had nothing to do with Scottsboro. On the night of 25 March 1931 the boys – the youngest 12, the oldest 19 – were hoboing on a freight train heading west to Memphis, Tennessee, when some of them got into a fight with a group of white youths. The white boys jumped off the train as it passed through the Scottsboro area and complained to the local sheriff that they had been attacked and with that one dubious claim Southern justice cranked into motion. 

The view from Scottsboro platform. The Boys' train came from this direction

By the time the train reached the next stop a posse of armed local white men had formed and the group went from carriage to carriage, arresting all the blacks they could find. As they were searching the train, they also came across two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.

The view from Scottsboro platform. The Boys' train headed towards this direction

It's hard from the distance of 80 years to appreciate fully what it meant for white women to be found even in the vicinity of black men in 1931. Any physical contact, however remote, was taboo.

That taboo probably explains why one of the women, Price, invented the story that she and Bates had been gang raped – it was a ruse to avoid any risk of being jailed overnight herself. For the black young men accused of raping the two white woman, the risk was of a different magnitude. In the 1930s Deep South it meant only one thing: death. As the Arkansas poet John Gould Fletcher put it, if a white woman swears that a black man even tried to rape her, "we see to it that the Negro is executed".

When the nine terrified boys were taken to the nearest town, Scottsboro and put in the local jail, there was only one question that needed settling: would they be executed judicially or at the end of a rope slung from the nearest tree. There were 13 lynchings in the US in 1931 and the nine came very close to dramatically inflating that figure – the sheriff had to call in the National Guard to hold back a large and angry mob.

Although Scottsboro is the seat of surrounding Jackson County, its town square is surprisingly quiet. There is a tiny shopping plaza that includes a US Marines recruiting centre, whilst around the corner is the proudly emblazoned Scottsboro Gun & Pawn store. By American standards it’s a very small city, lacking even a town centre McDonalds. On realising that I had ventured out without a notepad, the writer's essential tool, I looked around the square to purchase a replacement. There was neither a stationers nor a supermarket to hand but I did spot a homely looking gifts and trinkets store. Wandering in, the charming owner and a true Alabama Lady for sure, helped me out by selling me a blank notepad from her stock of admin supplies. I was profoundly grateful and we struck up a brief conversation for a visiting Englishman turns out to be a rare event in Scottsboro. It was when this delightful shopkeeper asked me why I was in town and I explained that I was there to meet Shelia Washington at the museum, that the hitherto famously warm Southern hospitality turned icy.

Lee Highway, Jackson County ..... there's a pattern emerging in these names. Those men were the Confederate heroes of the American Civil War, who took the South’s battles to the North and ultimately lost. And while time and (some) legislation has moved on, many troubling old attitudes still straddle the Mason Dixon Line. Where most local authorities provide some funding to museums or places of culture within their jurisdiction, Washington was to tell me that the Scottsboro city fathers offer her museum no cash whatsoever. Not one dollar. Her revelation chilled me, for whilst the Jim Crow days may be gone, Scottsboro still remains a town struggling with its identity.

The Scottsboro Boys Museum

The museum is sat next to the eponymous railroad line and as I parked my car, what seemed like a never-ending freight train was rolling by. Travelling slow, it blew its beautiful mournful two-tone horn, an iconic sound that so defines an American train. Aside from the fact that trains fascinate me, I was transfixed. I stood, watched and listened before knocking on the museum door.

Created in a now de-consecrated church and where the former chapel is still filled with pews, it was in this tiny hall in April 2013 that Alabama's Governor Bentley signed the State’s Senate Bill and House Resolution that formally pardoned and exonerated the Scottsboro Boys. If Schreiber is a powerhouse of theatre-producing, then Washington is a beacon to those who campaign for racial equality. She drove the campaign that led to the Scottsboro Boys' exoneration and amongst the good people of the South, she is a hero. 

Aside from an unexpected flurry of media interest, where two local newspapers and a TV news station had turned out to cover my visit, (for media link see below) I was touched that not only had Washington opened the museum specially for me (it usually opens twice a month), but that most of its Board of Trustees had turned out to meet with me too. I met with Caroline Lynch, the daughter of the now long deceased Dr Marvin Lynch and one of the two doctors who examined the women on the night of the alleged rapes, finding no evidence of sexual assault. The doctor truthfully reported his findings at the time, but they were ignored by the Scottsboro prosecutors as an inconvenient truth. It was not until some years later, that the medic felt safe enough to re-assert his clinical evidence.

Caroline Lynch

It is important to remember that amidst the evil turmoil that surrounded the Scottsboro Boys' wrongful arrest, there were acts of principled bravery from a number of white people. Most heroic perhaps was Scottsboro's Sheriff Matt Wann who supervised the shepherding of the boys, away from the baying mob, to the comparative safety of the town's jail on the night of the arrests. I met with Scottsboro citizen Clyde Broadway, who told of his uncle being tasked by Sheriff Wann to "go buy a skein of rope" to help corral the boys and keep them huddled together away from the crowds. One year later, Wann was to be shot dead on duty.

Clyde Broadway

But what of Shelia Washington and what drives this remarkable woman? Pilkington writes: 

Young Shelia Washington had never heard a single word of the story of the "Scottsboro Boys", as they were then called, despite having been born and brought up in the small town where such visceral history had been made. When her father found her reading the memoir he snatched the volume from her hands and ordered her never to open it again. "He said he didn't want me to know the harmful things that were contained inside," she says.

Shelia Washington

It is Washington's understated strength and conviction that is so profoundly humbling. She told me of her brother who had been brutally murdered in jail whilst serving his sentence. His killers had never been formally identified, let alone brought to justice and Washington is convinced that the murder was racially motivated. She believes she knows the identity of his killers too, but resignedly accepts that there is little she can do to achieve justice for her dead brother. It has been the harnessing of her rage at the injustice meted out to her brother that sparked her to champion the cause of the Scottsboro Boys. Even as I write this, Washington’s next mission is to locate and to mark the burial places of each of the nine men. Her commitment is unshakeable.

Against a backdrop of endemic racism, The Scottsboro Boys’ trials were to prove a focal point for the nation at that time, though as 87 year-old composer John Kander was to tell me recently:

I remembered that when I was just learning to read I would see on the newspaper, pretty much daily in those early reading days, something about The Scottsboro Boys. I didn't know what that was or who they were, but they were always mentioned, they were always called that title. As I began to be able to read and understand more, it seemed to me that they were always spoken of as a group. Then they disappeared altogether.

Whilst the story might have disappeared from the national headlines, it had already cemented a foundation for the emergent American civil rights movement. Rosa Parks, one of the key civil rights figures in the 1950s was a steadfast campaigner for the Scottsboro Boys and she in turn was to inspire the support of Martin Luther King. 

Recent events in the USA and elsewhere in the world tell us that the essential cause of the Scottsboro Boys is a fight that still goes on, with America in particular still having deep issues to address. Speaking in the Scottsboro Boys Museum on the day of Governor Bentley’s pardon, Alabama’s Representative Laura Hall said: 

Hopefully, our great State of Alabama can be Alabama the Beautiful, where justice is dispensed equally and fairly without regard to race, sex, social class or religious belief.

Hall’s is a noble hope, sincerely to be commended, but there is much to be done to realise it. It is to the credit of Scottsboro’s Shelia Washington however, that such momentous progress has already been achieved.


Media Links:

Click here to visit the website of The Scottsboro Boys Museum

Golem - Review

Young Vic, London

****

Directed and written by Suzanne Andrade

Golem is this year's seasonal offering from the Young Vic, a multimedia production from the usually ground-breaking 1927 company. Based on Gustav Meyrink's Jewish Czech fable of 100 years ago, the story tells of a man-made creature that starts its existence under the control of its creator but evolves to break the shackles of its its command, going on to dominate the people around it. Sounds familiar? Around a hundred years prior to Meyrink, Mary Shelley explored a similar vein with Frankenstein.

Today's outing adds little to the tale, other than to update dilute its message. Suzanne Andrade's Golem suggests that our monster is the technology from the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon to which we have enslaved ourselves. Andrade may have a point but her argument never leaves a first base of childish simplicity and predictability. Where Meyrink's original yarn ended with the Golem's death, this version conveniently avoids that troublesome flaw in the adaptation.

Nonetheless, the show is worth seeing, as its production values are first class. Paul Barritt's animations, which include a nude claymation Golem (think of a hybrid Morph, cross-bred with John Holmes) along with montages drawn from familiar images are brilliantly conceived. The performances of the 5 strong company are honed to precision and their interactions with the projections of the Golem as well as their entire surrounding world are flawless. Lillian Henley's music (played live) adds a delicious dimension to the whole.

Runs until 31st January 2015

Backstage with The Scottsboro Boys - Feature

The Young Vic Company

As the West End welcomes The Scottsboro Boys, I ventured backstage at London’s Garrick Theatre during final rehearsals to catch up with its inspirationally committed producer Catherine Schreiber, along with one of the production’s talented US imports actor James T Lane. I wanted to learn a little more about this remarkable minstrel show, that took the Young Vic by storm last December and went on to win the (UK’s most respected) Critics’ Circle award for Best Musical 2013. 

The Scottsboro Boys was to be the final collaboration of one of the greatest songwriting partnerships, that of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Kander and Ebb were masters of that rare art of studying man’s inhumanity to man and then being able to set the wickedness to toe-tapping tunes. Who else could have written Cabaret, a show about the rise of Nazism and the impending Holocaust, that was to give Liza Minelli such a career-defining belter of a title song. 

The start of the Scottsboro Boys’ true story may pre-date Hitler’s accession to the German Chancellorship by two years and by half a world, but history has taught us that evil respects no borders. With the Great Depression gripping the nation after the stock-market crash of 1929, people hopped freight trains to travel from one city to the next in search of work when a fight between blacks and whites broke out on a train in Jackson County on March 25, 1931. The train was brought to a halt at Scottsboro and trying to avoid arrest, two women on the train falsely accused nine black youths of raping them. It was an inflammatory allegation in the Jim-Crow South, where many whites were attempting to preserve supremacy just 66 years after the end of the Civil War and it did not take too much legal process for the accusations to be “proved” and for all nine to be sentenced to Alabama’s electric chair.

The Scottsboro Boys' plight gripped the nation, galvanising liberals in the North as their champions and proving a significant keystone in the foundations of the nascent Civil Rights Movement. Their case lurched precariously through the Alabama justice system and whilst this article will not reveal how the story ends, the whole musical focusses acutely upon the key tenet on which justice and decent society depend. That of individuals telling the truth. 

l-r David Thompson, Susan Stroman, Catherine Schreiber, John Kander
photo credit Paul Kolnick

Together with London's Young Vic and fellow New Yorker Paula Marie Black, Schreiber is Lead Producing the Garrick show, but the passion for both telling this tale and championing its cause is clearly in Schreiber's DNA. Following The Scottsboro Boys' off-Broadway premier at New York’s Vineyard Theatre (a production that gave rise to the only currently available Cast Recording, though Schreiber hints, intriguingly, at a London recording possibly being released) she worked hard to bring the show to Broadway, where it only was to last a disappointingly short run. Away from the stage and at home, her lawyer husband shares her passion for racial equality. He served his training clerkship with Thurgood Marshall, the man who was to become the first USA Supreme Court justice of African American heritage

Today, Scottsboro's The Scottsboro Boys Museum is curated by Shelia Washington and Schreiber’s eyes welled up (and to be honest, so did mine) as she spoke of having worked alongside this formidable woman, as the Broadway show (and beyond) evolved. Washington has laboured tirelessly for the Boys’ guilty verdicts to be revoked by the State of Alabama and her efforts remind us not only of the power of human endeavour (hers) in fighting for a cause, but also of quite how frighteningly recent and contemporary this whole episode has remained. It was not until April 2013 (that’s last year!) that the Scottsboro Boys were all finally exonerated by Alabama at a ceremony where Schreiber, already honoured with the key to Scottsboro, gave the keynote address.

Sat next to Schreiber, and with the assuring air of a performer who knows his material inside out, James T Lane exudes a gorgeously relaxed yet finely balanced poise as we talk. No stranger to the trans-Atlantic showbiz commute, this gifted hoofer not only wowed the crowds at the Young Vic with The Scottsboro Boys’ London debut, he had already spent most of that year at the London Palladium playing Richie in the acclaimed revival of A Chorus Line. His extensive experience, both on Broadway and across the USA belies his youthful 36 years and I for one would have loved to have seen his Tyrone in Fame, as the man’s voice and movement are simply astonishing.

James T Lane

As an African-American, Lane brings his own experiences to the show. Our discussions range across the racial prejudices experienced on both sides of the Atlantic, though whilst Britain is a multi-cultural nation that is still in pursuit of a more harmonious society, this country has only welcomed significant numbers of non-white immigrants since the latter half of the 20th century. America’s Statue of Liberty may well represent the open arms of a melting pot too all, but the African-American legacy that pre-dates the Civil War and stretches back to periods of horrendous slavery, provides a far more complex, painful history. 

My opening paragraph referred to The Scottsboro Boys as a minstrel show, but remember that it was this black-slapped buffoonery that dominated America’s theatres during the 19th century, promoting its insidiously acceptable culture of acceptable racism. Shamefully, it was only as late as 1978 that the BBC were still broadcasting The Black And White Minstrel Show across Britain in a primetime Saturday night slot. That The Scottsboro Boys spectacularly lampoons the minstrel genre, with a beautifully weighted gravitas from British white veteran actor Julian Glover as the show’s Interlocutor (think of a Variety Hall’s Chairman) only adds to the show’s painful poignancy.

Lane also remarks on the joy, of instead of going “up against” his African- American competitors in auditions, often pursuing the same opportunity, how The Scottsboro Boys has provided an opportunity for him to work (brilliantly, I might add) with some of his closest friends in the business. 

But Lane is only one of a number of Americans who have travelled back to the UK with the production. As well as having performed his roles in the Broadway show (and he plays, with remarkable conviction, one of the falsely accusing white women, Ruby Bates) he is joined by other Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo, all three of whom created their roles way back in 2010 at the Vineyard. Dixon’s Hayward Patterson is the show’s lead character whose struggles with the abuse of truth prove to be the show’s emotional fulcrum, whilst McClendon and Domingo play the minstrel-show regulars of Mr Bones and Mr Tambo, adopting all manner of acutely observed satirical characterisations.

The Young Vic Production

Whilst a five-star show has to deliver perfect performances from its actors, it is the creative talent behind the show that inspires the excellence and the pedigree of The Scottsboro Boys' team is faultless. As well as Kander and Ebb’s compositions that are structured around David Thompson’s book, it is Susan Stroman, the wunder-talent of recent years in musical theatre who has remained the director and choreographer of the show from the Vineyard to the Garrick. Hers is a remarkable commitment, for on the simplest of stages (this show has no techno-gimmicks whatsoever) the movement that she extracts from her company has to be seen to be believed.

Only on for 20 weeks The Scottsboro Boys will make you laugh and cry and the West End reviews will be out soon. Until then, these are my thoughts on the Young Vic production. The show truly is unmissable. See it and be humbled and amazed.

Runs at the Garrick Theatre until Saturday 21st February 2015