John Kander and Fred Ebb are known for their unsettling musicals, in which they blend lyricism and irony, sentiment and scathing worldliness.
The Scottsboro Boys, receiving its UK premiere three years after its New York opening (and nine after Ebb’s death) is no exception.
It is a daring piece of work that will challenge the convictions of anyone who thinks musical theatre tends to be either splashy and camp or plaintively nostalgic.
It uses the artifice of a minstrel show (traditionally a form in which white performers would put on blackface) to tell the true, grim and in Britain little-known story of nine black teenagers wrongly accused of rape in racially segregated Alabama during the Thirties.
Here conventional minstrelsy is turned on its head. Aside from the master of ceremonies (Julian Glover), all the actors, no matter who they are playing, are black.
The combination of a distasteful artform, racial intolerance and perky dance routines is guaranteed to make us squirm. Are we meant to be entertained or nauseated? In essence, the answer is both.
This is a barbed, ambitious show that revels in contrast as it simultaneously charms and provokes.
Directed by Susan Stroman, the whole cast is superb — a mix of British talent and performers who graced the original Broadway show.
Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon make a snappily unpleasant double act as wisecracking “end men” Mr Bones and Mr Tambo. But the stand-out performance comes from the imposing Kyle Scatliffe as Haywood Patterson, the most defiant of the accused.
Stroman’s pin-sharp choreography creates an unrelenting dynamism. And if much of the music has a buoyant ragtime flavour, the resonant thud of a drum remains ominously present, while the lyrics are often wickedly acerbic.
My main cavil is that, playing nearly two hours without an interval, The Scottsboro Boys needs more tonal variety.
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Yet it is eloquent about the scope for a single lie to devastate the lives of innocent people. It is in many respects a brilliant achievement, though not as seductive as Kander and Ebb’s biggest hits, Cabaret and Chicago.
Until December 21 (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org).
