Colman Domingo and the humanizing act of making theatre co-star in “Sing Sing,” a sometimes moving and often entertaining dramedy about prison inmates who just want to “put on a show.”
Domingo and a couple of other professional actors, and a lot of inmates, play members of various strata of New York’s Sing Sing Maximum Security inmate population society who “put in the work” to put on plays — rehearsing, doing theatrical exercises, connecting with their feelings as part of an RTA (Rehabilitation Through the Arts) project.
Divine G (Domingo) is abuzz with busyness, a man always at the keyboard, writing plays, novels and what not. There’s a note he’s penned to the bulletin board in his books-and-notebook-filled cell. “Finish two novels” while he’s inside. When another inmate asks for an autograph, he’s holding a copy of a paperback novel. Apparently John “Divine G” Whitfield is a published author.
We glimpse him on stage as Lysander in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — “And ere a man hath power to say “Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up.”
No matter what anybody else is doing with their hard time, Divine G has hurled himself into creating fiction and acting. His RTA time is his “happy place,” an oasis from the Darwinian world of The Yard and every other place in this notorious lock-up.
Divine G is known, respected for all this self-improvement and creativity. He’s not the director of the plays, but he’s an on-stage coach to help his brothers find their character, to teach them memorizing-your-lines tricks and to help them learn to act as outside consultant Brent (Paul Raci) directs.
He’s not shy at letting how hurt he is show when the group’s planning committee decides that their new play must be a comedy, and be a “new play.” But it won’t be one Divine G. has scripted.
It should have “pirates” and “cowboys” and “time travel” and “ancient Egyptians” and the like. Let’s all have share an eyeroll with Divine G. over that.
And this newest member of their company may be the toughest guy in the yard, a real “block monster.” Divine G? Meet Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin).
Divine Eye was on “the waiting list” to get into the ensemble. But he’s not shy about making his auditioners wait if he’s got some shakedown or threat he needs to carry out. Divine Eye wants to be “that Hamlet dude.” He “gets” Shakespeare’s great existential question, “To be, or not to be.”
“I’ve been playin’ a part my whole life.”
“Sing Sing” is about putting on that impossible show, the one with Hamlet and cowboys and time travel and pirates and gladiators — Did I mention the gladiators? — and Egyptians in search of their “Mummy.”
Director and co-writer Greg Kwedar — he directed and co-wrote “Transpecos” and co-wrote “Jockey” — does a decent job of balancing the “real world” these artists live in with the low stakes theater one they give themselves over to.
A lot of what we see here is perfectly predictable — drama behind the comedy they’re trying to put on, sudden death, parole hearings and the fatalism of the lifers. But Domingo (“Rustin,” “The Color Purple”) elevates everything he appears in, even the zombie TV show that gave him his big break.
Domingo creates electricity in his scenes with ex-con Maclin, a “brother” who has to be instructed that we don’t drop the N-word at rehearsal. “We use ‘Beloved.'” As in “What up, my Beloved?” Divine G. lets little of his own personal story out, just a bit here and there. But being smart and well-read, he has high hopes the parole board will consider new evidence and his helpful activities inside when they meet him again.
On stage or “in stir,” have faith in “the system,” he preaches.
“The system that’s trying to keep you in here,” Divine Eye cracks?
There’s fun in the inventiveness of the troupe as they simulate a pirate ship on stage (a laundry cart with a mast and a newspaper sail) or clouds (sheets of clear plastic, waved/undulated from the wings) and cook up the most bizarre costumes.
And there’s tension in the short-fused Divine Eye testing Divine G’s patience, power and manhood.
“Everybody thinks something about you, just because you dance.”
There are more worthy dramas, dramatic scripts and lead performances among this year’s crop of “awards contenders.” But you’ll be hard-pressed to find another movie with “And the Oscar goes to” pretensions more entertaining than the inspiring tale of inmates trying to make comedy out of utter nonsense on the stage in “Sing Sing.”
Rating: R, threats of violence, profanity
Cast: Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose, Mosi Eagle, David Giraudy and Paul Raci
Credits: Directed by Greg Kwedar, scripted by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, based on prison plays by “The Sing Sing Follies” (by John H. Richardson) and “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code” by Brent Buell. the An A24 release.
Running time: 1:47
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