Sing Sing: Caged Free Spirits Put on a Show in a Reality-Based Tale of Jailhouse Musical Theatre
By Chris Knight
Rating: A
“We’re here to become human again, to put on nice clothes, and dance around, and enjoy the things that are not in our reality.”
It’s an unlikely motto for a jail, but it’s how one of the characters in Sing Sing (the name of the film and of the infamous maximum security prison where it’s set) describes Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a program that allows convicts to write, rehearse and perform theatrical productions while doing time.
RTA is the real deal. Founded in Sing Sing in 1996, it now operates in six New York State prisons, and is the subject of at least two documentaries: the 2015 feature Dramatic Escape and a more recent seven-minute short, Unlocked.
Colman Domingo and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin in Sing Sing.
But Sing Sing is obviously fictional, since it stars Colman Domingo, who has not to my knowledge done anything to warrant incarceration (and no, appearing in 2019’s Lucy in the Sky doesn’t count). But it does carry the whiff of documentary about it. The fluid camerawork helps, but also the fact that most of the supporting players are graduates of RTA, which is to say they’re ex-cons. That sounds like stunt casting, but it works, and they’re excellent.
Domingo may be the star, but he’s not carrying the movie. Although his character, John “Divine G” Whitfield, might think differently of himself. Divine G is the self-styled leader of the prison’s performing arts cadre, eager to advise, criticize and mentor his fellow inmates, sometimes against their will. Though as we’ll learn late in the film, he’s not always the best at taking what he dishes out.
The story opens on an ending - the group has just finished a rollicking performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and then, in a crushing, back-to-reality moment, return to their cells under the watchful eyes (and occasionally abusive tongues) of their jailers.
Director Greg Kwedar delivers a few similar moments to remind us that this is a maximum-security institution and not a summer camp. There’s a heartbreaking scene in which Divine G’s tidy, library-like cell is unceremoniously turned inside out in one of the guards’ regular searches for contraband - but the film doesn’t push the point.
Nor does it lean into the stereotype of prison as a setting for random acts of violence. Yes, the film makes it clear that such events are possible, but it doesn’t feel the need to show us what we already know. Interestingly, the one character in the movie who dies does so off-screen, and in his sleep. So it goes.
Instead, we’re drawn into the daily drama as this group of men work together to create something that is their own, while sometimes butting up against their own traumas, and the hopelessness of decades spent inside.
After giving Shakespeare a shake, they decide to go off-book and craft their own play, a raucous, time-travelling comedy that combines Egyptian mummies, Hamlet, Captain Hook, Freddy Krueger and a few other pop-cultural references. Trademark infringement? What are the rights holders going to do - jail them?
They’re aided by a volunteer theatre director, played with wiry, high-school-drama-teacher energy by character actor Paul Raci. But the show is very much their own. RTA is a strictly volunteer program, with no academic requirement to enter or good-behaviour code to remain. Sing Sing, while not an advertisement for the program, does seem to capture what makes it special, and what its participants get from the experience.
It also explores the things that draw prisoners together emotionally, even as the confines of the prison system do so physically. Sometimes the fit is less than perfect. Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (the character’s name is also the actor’s as he plays a version of himself) is invited into the group, but has a hard time leaving his prison-yard persona at the rehearsal room door.
This also makes him one of the most fascinating characters, both for the audience and for Divine G, who takes him under his wing. In addition to helping him find his inner thespian, Divine G schools him in the ins and outs of parole application.
His own encounter with that end of the justice system is one of the most powerful and dramatic moments in the film, which, in a movie about putting on a play, is saying a lot.
Sing Sing. Directed by Greg Kwedar. Starring Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, and Paul Raci. Opens in theatres Friday, Aug. 2.