Sing Sing
106 minutes, MA15+
Reviewed by JAKE WILSON
★★★
“Brush up your Shakespeare,” sang the gangsters in Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s riff on The Taming of the Shrew. I’ve always been touched by the idea theatre enthusiasts can come from any walk of life – roughly the premise of Greg Kwedar’s docudrama Sing Sing, named for the famous maximum security prison north of Manhattan.
Kwedar didn’t get to shoot in Sing Sing, but his supporting cast includes many former inmates: veterans of a rehabilitation program that let them stage plays, guided by volunteers such as director Brent Buell (played here by Paul Raci as a hardworking and patient hippie).
Colman Domingo, left, and Clarence Maclin in a scene from Sing Sing.Credit: AP
Sing Sing chronicles the staging of one of Buell’s own works, a time-travel romp that veers from Ancient Egypt to outer space to satisfy his actors’ varied demands. It’s not Shakespeare, but the “To be or not to be” soliloquy gets thrown into the mix to be performed by one of two potential Hamlets.
The first is John “Divine G” Whitfield, played by distinguished screen and stage actor Colman Domingo (the real Whitfield has a cameo). Whitfield is the prison’s resident intellectual, a published novelist who’s spent years battling to prove his innocence while giving legal advice to others.
Outwardly mild, he’s still conscious of being a man apart. But if Whitfield is the troupe’s top dog, a rival is set on being a greater Dane: the swaggering Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who plays himself in his screen debut. The tension between these characters is boosted by the contrast between Domingo’s highly crafted performance and Maclin’s more intuitive one.
From here, it’s a small step to the familiar but bottomless paradoxes associated not just with theatre but with make-believe in general. Maclin’s dramatic gifts first emerge in the prison yard, where he uses them to intimidate a fellow inmate; at a later parole hearing, Whitfield mentions his involvement with the theatre program as a point in his favour, only to be asked if he’s “acting” at the hearing itself.
But like the play within the film, Sing Sing often appears to be straining to satisfy competing demands. How do you tell an uplifting story that offends no one and showcases the specific talents of Domingo and Maclin while staying true to the spirit of actual events and giving the whole cast a chance to shine?
Shakespeare, no doubt, would have had the answer. In his absence, Sing Sing remains a mishmash: the funny moments aren’t frequent enough to qualify it as a comedy, while as drama, it ceases to build in intensity beyond a certain point.
