SOUND OFF: Hymns to Hims

This week we are taking a listen to a stunning new release of a brand new Broadway score coming from one of the most celebrated and cherished American songwriting teams in Broadway and Hollywood history - if only for "Cabaret" and "New York, New York" if not everything else as well - the incandescent Kander & Ebb. Today we take an indepth look at one of their final scores together as captured on a cast recording in anticipation of the Broadway bow of this show in its off-Broadway to Broadway transfer later this month. Shout "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey" - it's the Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording of THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS and that alone gives us reason to sing hymns to the many hims - as well as the single her, the director/choreographer at the helm, multi-Tony-winning Susan Stroman - overflowing with appreciation and praise to these fine craftsmen and the cast conveying the controversial and candid topic at the center of the show. Broadway rarely has this much sardonic bite - and biting bang - for your buck than this show and subsequent cast recording do. Kander & Ebb once again show us how it's done, and done best - and rewrite all of the rules while doing it.

Alabama Gentlemen

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording

A lot of love has gone into preserving the stirring and somewhat unsettling score of this almost-impossible-to-fully-embrace-show. If ANYTHING GOES is easy-to-love, as its own song title states, thus SCOTTSBORO is tough-love, in many more ways than one. The story being told is tough, the way the story is being told may make us uncomfortable and the authors have not shied away from showing the true treacherousness of the very recent past in our own backyard in an unflinching and almost completely deglamorized way. Yes, it's a minstrel show - but my what motivation for a milieu such as that for a story as racially charged as this. That is the first stroke of brilliance in a series of such touches in this edgy and provocative enterprise as it exists on disc now courtesy of Jay Records. I suppose the same dispersions lobbed at this show could have been cast at CABARET, CHICAGO, THE RINK, KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN and THE VISIT - that is, that they are too dark, too depressing, too political, too outré - since they are all shows which both antagonize audiences and elicit honest emotion from them at the same time. Kander & Ebb really found the musical language for Brechtian alienation better than any other individual or team (even Brecht/Weill themselves in many cases). It is clear to see (if only in the text alone) of all of those shows - and this one. Yes, those shows - and, now, along with THE SCOTSBORO BOYS - criticize, challenge and comfort us all at the same time, while stretching the limits of what theatre music can do while never working outside the traditional song structures so well-worn and well-loved - all of this while keeping the story moving forward. Kander & Ebb are master musical and dramaturgical jugglers and with Stroman they have their ideal jester. Such is the allure of Kander & Ebb: all the things going on all at the same time and the ways the story and songs are forcing us to interpret and intellectualize what we are seeing, hearing and experiencing while we are seeing, hearing and experiencing it. What to expect? We just never can second-guess what they are going to throw at us next. Sometimes, they hit you in the toe - a catchy cakewalk ditty. Sometimes they punch you in the gut - an unabashedly emotional, romantic moment underscored by something sinister. Other times, they hit you in the heart - a simple, honest, plain love ballad when you least expect it. Still other times, they hit you square between the eyes - a pointed political dirge. Least of all, they always give us a moment - sometimes spoken, sometimes sung - of hope. Whether hymn or anthem, hummable or atonal, no matter how dark the world is, somewhere a candle burns in a nearly-dark, distant window. All of these characteristics and more are integral to the understanding of the power and scope of this score and this show - as well as the very mark of American history being born in the guise of these two great songsmiths.

The "Minstrel March" marks the umpteenth catchy opening number with an irresistible vamp from the Kander & Ebb canon, but by the time "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey" sets in you, too, will see why magic can continue to be conjured by the masters of the dark arts. No one is more the master of the dark musical - perhaps Sondheim, but he can do everything - than Kander & Ebb and over the course of just the first number we are drawn into the familiar hominess (The "Oklahoma"-esque "Co-ome"'s in "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey") we can't quite place, with a biting political aside ("Have you ever told the truth before?", "No, I've never done this before.")and a toe-tapping theme you can‘t force yourself to forget any time soon. Broadway stalwart John Cullum is the Interlocutor and narrator of the show and his participation in the show - and cast recording on disc - brings us into the world of the show and characters as if we are going with a friendly ghost, or a recently passed-away grandparent, and his big ballad "It's Gonna Take Time" is creaky and old-fashioned, which is lovely and surprising in a show and score this innovative, with the unexpected the imperative mode of presentation. He has a comforting presence and an air of confidant assuredness and joviality which enumerates us to him and to his material from the very first footstep and forward. Brandon Victor Dixon is a force of nature and a star, plain and simple and it's a shame he won't be going with the show to Broadway. "Alabama Ladies" is ribald and riotously amusing, but the show begins baring its teeth at this point and it is not long before the jaw seems locked with its incisors pressed into our very adam‘s apples. Indeed, this show gives new meaning to feeling all choked up - and that is not a pun on hanging, easy as it would be to make that joke. Perhaps I should. After all, isn't this whole show about mocking something to make it lose its power? Isn't that what a minstrel show on Broadway in 2010 does - or, at least, what it is supposed to do?

"I ain't done nothin',/ but I'm goin' to die," puts the plight of these pitiable men who met pitifully sad ends in a nutshell. If you understand that, then you may enjoy this cast album thoroughly and you can maneuver a way to wink along with wincing and smile with the sour taste in your mouth. It's supposed to be a bitter pill to swallow some of this sarcastic and satirical structure, story and score- and, overall, super-showboat-y show, given the importance placed upon and weight given to the pizazzy performance pieces. Case in point: "Electric Chair". The title says it all. Yet, then comes "Go Back Home" and we melt like butter in a steel skillet. Only Kander & Ebb can get away with smacking us with the frying pan before serving us the omelet.

It's at this point what seemed a good score makes itself great. "Shout" makes me want to do just that and the jubilation of the celebration at the foundation of this is the confection of perfection of a cakewalk number. This, coming from the grand Gershwin gateau chef himself, Mr. Kander. The musical inventiveness and lyrical playfulness of this score is that of young men, not a team fifty years into to their career. Just look at either of the next two numbers for further fodder for that area of focus, particularly the wit and unmistakable turn of phrase elemental to Ebb: "Make Friends With The Truth" and "That's Not The Way We Do Things". I suppose the especially evident erudition and edginess makes it even sadder still that Ebb was so sharp up until the very end with Ebb's untimely passing six years ago. He is irreplaceable. These are some of his sharpest lyrics and Kander's versatility as now a lyricist (and adaptor of Ebb's sketches for some songs, as many in this score show) in addition to being such a strong composer is proof positive of their effect on each other and their partnership - and intimacy - of understanding what makes the other shine most and finding a way to focus on those features. After all, some say that ideal collaboration occurs when one individual reveals the best of the other in the art. Such is the case with this score. "Never Too Late" builds handsomely and the gospel inflections are welcome. "Southern Days" begins in an acapella spiritual manner and soon the banjos and violins and succulent harmonies overwhelm the listener, a triptych together transpiring to transport us to the very perspire on the brow of an Alabama death row inmate. It's that atmospheric. "Chain Gang", too. The title song is spine-tingling and chilling, as good as the best of anything in CABARET, CHICAGO or SPIDERWOMAN.

All the songs sound alternately - and appropriately - slick, seething, sure, slimy and crude when needed, as well as a few moments of sheer beauty to stir up the mix, as we see in the song stack as it plays out. That's a lot for a score to do, plus under the guise these guys (onstage and off) must do it under. The songs consistently sound authentic to the intentions of the characters - especially the boys themselves and the Interlocutor - even if it really isn't the sound you would hear in Alabama at the time of the show. Anachronism is par for the course. It's simply too big Broadway brassy and too little lil' country dumplin' for a music purist to ever make that mistake of expecting that of the sound of this score, but no worry: Larry Hochman's orchestrations, as well as David Loud's overall musical direction and arrangements, match the acerbic Americana ala acid by-way of Broadway implicit in the music and lyrics of the score - anthem for anthem, bite for bite and cakewalk for cakewalk. Its attitudes could not have come out of that period, so why should the music expertly evoke it? This is a Broadway score, no doubt about it. It is also all of one whole and it all sounds appropriate and better than one could expect given the limitations of the size of Broadway (and, even more so, off-Broadway) orchestras today. While I will never be a fan of the overall sound design on JAY Records, in the past or more recently - because, to be completely honest: they often sound empty to my ears, and on occasion tinny and chintzy - this is certainly one of their best cast albums in their complete catalogue and they are to be commended for preserving the entire score. Appreciation, as well, is due them for providing fans with a song that has since been cut from the score as well as a John Kander demo recording of "Go Back Home". That last treat is a true tear-jerker given the lonesome and lonely-leaning lyrical content - and lyric writer who wrote them: Fred Ebb, who the world lost in 2004. THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS has darkness and daringness of the best of Bob Fosse (the director of CHICAGO onstage and the Oscar-winning film version of CABARET, as well as LIZA WITH A Z) along with the panache, style and polish so associated with Susan Stroman (who did well with STEEL PIER) and the show and score as represented on this disc is one worthy of such grand associative aspirations - all befitting, particularly given the persuasive power and political daringness of this tough-love musical. After all is said and song, it is made as clear to see as black and white that true greatness lies here and that the truth never lies. And there lies the truth.