Karma Chameleon
Fourth Time's a Charm For Actor Colman Domingo, Star of the new Broadway show The Scottsoboro Boys
By Whitney Spaner
Photographed by Alex Uncapher
"Fourth time's a charm," actor Colman Domingo says of his fourth Broadway show, The Scottsboro Boys, which opened at the Lyceum Theatre last week. "When I was a kid, my aunt had me look into a crystal ball. She asked what my favorite number was and I said 'four' -- she was really into numerology," he explains. Perhaps Auntie Domingo was on to something.
The provocative new musical is a satiric minstrel-style show based on the true story of nine African-American teens falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931 and the decades-long, racially-fueled trials in Scottsboro, Alabama, that followed. It also happens to be the last in a long line of collaborations by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who produced classics like Chicago and Cabaret. Ebb died in 2004, but it was not until this past spring, with the help of director/choreographer Susan Stroman, that Kander felt ready to premiere what he refers to as the duo's most "political work" off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. Tickets sold out before it opened, and Broadway producers swooped in. Domingo's character is not one of the nine accused. Instead, he brings the intensity and bewitchery of a vaudevillian Busta Rhymes to the role of the artful MC, Mr. Bones, who also doubles (with a wink and a nod) as many of the white characters, including a deceptive attorney general and a brutish Southern cop.
As for his chameleon casting, this is not Domingo's first time at the costume shop. He seamlessly changed from choir director to stoner to rabid performance artist in 2008's emo-rock musical Passing Strange, and last year he dramatized his entire family in A Boy and His Soul, his autobiographical one-man show about growing up in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood as a homosexual, African-American man. "Sometimes I think I just want to show up in one costume, sit down at a table and say a monologue," Domingo says in mock exasperation. "Maybe deep down inside I'm like Sybil or something, and I have all these personalities waiting to come out. I'm glad they come out in the theater and not on the streets. I would have been put away ten years ago."
The provocative new musical is a satiric minstrel-style show based on the true story of nine African-American teens falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931 and the decades-long, racially-fueled trials in Scottsboro, Alabama, that followed. It also happens to be the last in a long line of collaborations by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who produced classics like Chicago and Cabaret. Ebb died in 2004, but it was not until this past spring, with the help of director/choreographer Susan Stroman, that Kander felt ready to premiere what he refers to as the duo's most "political work" off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. Tickets sold out before it opened, and Broadway producers swooped in. Domingo's character is not one of the nine accused. Instead, he brings the intensity and bewitchery of a vaudevillian Busta Rhymes to the role of the artful MC, Mr. Bones, who also doubles (with a wink and a nod) as many of the white characters, including a deceptive attorney general and a brutish Southern cop.
As for his chameleon casting, this is not Domingo's first time at the costume shop. He seamlessly changed from choir director to stoner to rabid performance artist in 2008's emo-rock musical Passing Strange, and last year he dramatized his entire family in A Boy and His Soul, his autobiographical one-man show about growing up in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood as a homosexual, African-American man. "Sometimes I think I just want to show up in one costume, sit down at a table and say a monologue," Domingo says in mock exasperation. "Maybe deep down inside I'm like Sybil or something, and I have all these personalities waiting to come out. I'm glad they come out in the theater and not on the streets. I would have been put away ten years ago."
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