Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon in "The Scottsboro Boys." / Photo by Paul Kolnik

After playing off-Broadway last spring and getting a just-completed tune-up run at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, "The Scottsboro Boys" opened on Broadway Sunday night at the Lyceum Theater. The New York Times review, which made no mention of the Guthrie, was mixed to negative. It said the Broadway version, despite a strong cast and winning direction, "never really resolves the tension between its impulse to entertain us with jokes and quivering tambourines and the desire to render the harsh morals of its story with earnest insistence."

For my money, the most penetrating comment is when critic Charles Isherwood writes: "For queasy-making moments in musical theater, I'm not sure anything can top the number crisply titled 'Electric Chair,' a tap dance presented here as the nightmare of the youngest prisoner, with Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones taunting:

Oh, the juice runs through you / And you stark to shake / It's a kind of tap dance / But you can't awake."

When I saw this truly creepy number at the Guthrie, I thought, "the makers of this musical just don't have the appropriate tone for handling this material."

The musical recounts the famous 1930s trial of nine black teens for raping two white women in Alabama. Its music is by John Kander and Fred Ebb. It is directed by Susan Stroman.

The critic from Entertainment Weekly did mention the Guthrie, and liked the show enough to give it this rave and a letter grade of A.

Suggested links.

Star Tribune review of the Guthrie show.

Star Tribune commentary on the show.

Readers weigh in about the production at the Guthrie.

Star Tribune story about the show and its Guthrie tryout.

Full New York Times review.

Cast of "The Scottsboro Boys"