The Philadelphia Theatre Company is sure to create a buzz among local theatergoers when it brings the Tony Award-winning musical “The Scottsboro Boys” to town Jan. 20-Feb. 19.
The musical, which debuted both on and off Broadway in 2010, has courted intrigue and controversy because of the subject matter, and because it was the final musical written by legendary gay composers and songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb.
The musical explores the Scottsboro case of the 1930s in which a group of African-American teenagers are falsely accused of rape and denied a fair trial, ultimately provoking a national outcry that laid the groundwork for the American civil-rights movement.
After making his Broadway debut as Mr. Tambo in the production and being nominated for a Tony Award in 2011 for best supporting actor, out performer Forrest McClendon returns to the role in the Philadelphia run of the show.
McClendon said receiving a Tony nomination for the part changed his life.
“I’m trying to find the right words for it,” he said. “I was gobsmacked, I was stunned, I was a lot of things and really overwhelmed. For me, I’m a Philadelphia-based actor and I’ve worked in all of the companies here. So to just work at The Vineyard Theatre [off-Broadway] on this play was quite enough. I’ve done the ‘Threepenny Opera’ at the Wilma Theater, so minstrel scenes and blackface wasn’t something new for me. It is an archaic art form but an art form that I think, as an actor, has a virtuoso element to it. So to be able to explore that again and at the same time tell a real story while working with Kander and Ebb really was quite enough. Suddenly, they tell me I’m going to Broadway and then somebody calls me after the show closes and told me I was nominated. For that to happen was really, really amazing and deeply gratifying. Because we always think we’re doing something meaningful and important, and then to have the community come back and recognize the show was absolutely amazing.”
McClendon said that Mr. Tambo — one of the two end-men who take on different characters to portray the story — is one of the more complex roles in the show.
“The interesting thing abut playing Mr. Tambo is just that it’s one of the end-men in a traditional minstrel show,” he said. “There’s an interlocutor, who’s kind of a master of ceremonies. Then there’re the two end-men that — in a traditional minstrel show with a semicircle of singers, the interlocutor sits in the center and the two end-men sit on either end of the semicircle — they basically interact with the interlocutor, telling jokes and largely moving the story forward, whatever story the interlocutor has chosen to tell on that particular evening. It just turns out in our case the interlocutor has chosen the story of the Scottsboro Boys.”
He added that through Tambo, he gets to play other roles in the story.
“That’s what’s really fun about it as an actor,” he said. “You play this guy that morphs into six or seven other people. For Mr. Tambo, I not only get to play not only within the construct of the minstrel show, but he also plays several key characters that are involved in the fate of the Scottsboro Boys. I play their first lawyer, who is so drunk in their first trial that he can barely stand up. The fact that they didn’t have adequate representation resulted in the legal precedents that came out of the case. So the right to adequate representation is something that became codified in the country. So I get to play him and then I get to play the Northern Jewish liberal lawyer who comes down to try and save the day. I play a couple of guards and a deputy — again, all characters the boys interact with in the course of the story.”
The minstrel elements of “The Scottsboro Boys,” a form of entertainment popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s that included, among other things, white actors performing in blackface and racist humor, drew protests during its run on Broadway.
McClendon, who is black, viewed the controversy in a positive light.
“I loved it but of course it was difficult. I don’t think you can do bold, daring work that is provocative and have people say that it’s provocative, then expect people to not be provoked. I love to embrace the controversy in that sense. The difficulty in commercial theater is you sometimes can’t come out and have the full-blown discussions that you can have [because] you are trying to sell tickets. For me, when you go to someplace like The Vineyard where one expects to find very edgy work, it’s obviously a little more tolerable. When you go someplace like The Guthrie [Theater in Minneapolis], where people expect bold experimental work, it’s a little more palatable. In commercial theater, sometimes you can’t come out and talk about some of the tough stuff. I didn’t mind it so much and the reason why I would want to revisit a chapter like this is the discussion it can start. Sadly, when you’re dealing with people who said they would not even see the show, you can’t have that conversation and that’s the unfortunate thing.”
McClendon acknowledged hat people might have objected to such a heavy subject being addressed on stage as a musical.
“I agree and disagree,” he said. “I think that the idea of musicalizing this story is what was so offensive to some of those who protested it. They couldn’t comprehend that you could take something so serious and trivialize it by making it a musical. The flipside of it is I don’t see drama doing spectacularly well on Broadway. So nothing indicates to me that if it had been done as a drama, it would have had more success. I think for the audiences that did see it, the musical elements were helpful because it was the only way they could really deal with this very, very heavy subject matter. The minstrel form, in spite of the fact that it has a racist history, is an entertaining form. It’s a form that is all about coming out, taking three minutes and giving the audience a rise. The form was helpful in terms of presenting something that was so heavy.”
As the last show to feature music written by Kander and Ebb, “The Scottsboro Boys” won’t disappoint the duo’s fans.
“It’s right in line with the work that they do,” McClendon said. “The idea of ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ this story set in a Latin American prison, the idea of ‘Cabaret,’ a story set in the middle of Nazi Germany, the idea of taking really big moments in history and using them for storytelling in musical form is very in line with what Kander and Ebb have always done. The darker, the better. Kander said to me in my first coaching with him, ‘You cannot go too far.’ There’s no better way to begin as an actor.”
He added that all audiences, whether they’re fans of Kander and Ebb or just enjoy theater, will find something entertaining and uplifting about the production.
“People are absolutely going to be entertained and educated,” McClendon said. “There is just nobody who has seen the play who has failed to be moved. I think one of the things that may be interesting for the LGBT audience is that idea that you will have men playing women and, in particular, you will have black men playing women. So we’ll be crossing racial lines, which is what is so inflammatory about the minstrel form, but we’re also crossing gender lines.”
The Philadelphia Theatre Company presents “The Scottsboro Boys,” Jan. 20-Feb. 19 at Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St. For more information or tickets, visit www.forrestmcclendon.com or www.philadelphiatheatrecompany.org, or call 215-985-0420.