In “Minstrelsy and Brechtian Epic Theater: An Analysis of Satire,” James Robson investigates Kander and Ebb’s musical The Scottsboro Boys in order to formulate an appropriate critical response to an enigmatic and, some say, offensive musical by the men who created Cabaret. The play is set up as a minstrel show in the same way that Cabaret is set in a 1930s Berlin cabaret, but the problem for the audience is that the German cabaret tradition is grounded in social and political satire, while the American minstrel tradition is grounded in promoting racism and offensive stereotypes as “entertainment.” Are Kander and Ebb being disrespectful to the nine “Scottsboro boys,” who were wrongly convicted and imprisoned for raping two white women, by placing them in a minstrel show in a way that seems offensive, or at the very least insensitive, or are they employing a more complex dramatic strategy?
Robson’s answer is that Kander and Ebb have created an approach to satire based on “Brechtian epic theater.” This is a sophisticated argument well supported by reference to the primary text as well as to a range of critical sources, the core of which is that Brechtian theater is politically motivated and not intended to create identification between characters and audience. The effect is supposed to be alienating, confusing, off-putting, offensive, the point of which is to place the audience in the position of taking responsibility for their own response—which in this case means taking responsibility for racial injustice in America. This is an approach to musical theater that is bound to make many theater-goers uncomfortable, and that is the point, though it is certainly not the point of most American musicals.
Robson’s argument is valuable because it can help us to make sense of a work that stands in a theatrical tradition that we in America might not be familiar with, or know how to respond to. The Scottsboro Boys turns the traditional American musical on its head: we don’t walk out feeling good and humming the tunes; we walk out feeling bad and wondering what to do about the problem at the heart of the drama, and of the “entertainment.” Robson astutely investigates the tension Kander and Ebb have created between the American minstrel tradition and the Brechtian tradition of alienating or “epic” theater, the unbearable tension created by the duality of characters who are both minstrel-show caricatures and real-life men who were the victims of a Depression-era tragedy that, upon further reflection, turns out to be our ongoing national tragedy.
— ANTHONY WALLACE
WR 100: The Theater Now