Actor Adrian Lester has said a controversial Broadway musical about a racist miscarriage of justice is so powerful because it forces audiences to think.
Speaking at the British premiere of The Scottsboro Boys, by Cabaret writers John Kander and Fred Ebb, the Hustle star said the use of the now discredited minstrel form to tell the story was deliberately “very provocative”.
“It’s meant to push buttons,” Lester said at the Young Vic last night where the audience included theatre impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson and his wife Kathy Lette.
The Scottsboro Boys uses the form of a minstrel show to tell the true story of nine young men in Alabama who in 1931 were wrongly convicted of rape.
Lester said: “It’s good to be presented with something you react to — then with your intellect you react to your reaction. What you can’t deny is the talent of the performances.”
Ealing-raised Adebayo Bolaji,30, who plays Clarence Norris, one of the wrongly convicted men, said: “In all sincerity, it’s beyond an acting job. I feel I have a particularly duty to tell the story of these boys.
“Had I been born in a different time and place, it could have been me. We’re both young black men. It’s the most important piece of theatre I’ve done.”
The use of the minstrel form was “completely empowering”, he added — though at times, in rehearsals, it had reduced him to tears. “It was a strange experience.”
Colman Domingo, 43, who was in the original acclaimed Broadway cast, said a racially charged incident clashing with a racially charged musical form was “theatre magic”. Domingo, who was also in the film Lincoln and will be shortly be seen in the new movie The Butler, added: “This is one of the proudest things in my career.”
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Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said he was deeply moved. “It just shows how long it took to eradicate racism from jury trials,” he said.
But he worried other prejudices remained in the legal process. “I worry about it now with all these celebrities being done as a result of [Jimmy] Savile.”
Speaking from America, composer John Kander, 86, said he was “terrifically excited” the musical was premiering at the Young Vic — “a theatre that nourishes new work” — where he will see it later in the run.
He completed the lyrics after the death of his writing partner Ebb.
