Sing Sing: a moving celebration of human creativity

Despite the title, this isn’t a musical – and though it occasionally arouses memories of Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), it’s not really a prison movie in any conventional sense. Instead, it’s a heartening celebration of the way that human creativity, if put to intelligent and enlightened use, can transform even the most seemingly hopeless lives.

Drawn from a 2005 Esquire piece by John H. Richardson, ‘The Sing Sing Follies’, Greg Kwedar’s film opens with a theatrically costumed man, Divine G (played by Colman Domingo), declaiming a speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to ecstatic applause. The performance over, though, we see the cast, divested of their resplendent costumes, lined up in drab green prison uniforms and marched off to their cells by unsmiling jailers.

Of the film’s cast, only Domingo, Paul Raci as Brent Buell, the jail’s programming director, and Sean San José as Divine G’s Hispanic cellmate ‘Mike Mike’ are professional actors. The rest are former Sing Sing inmates, essentially playing themselves, who were all participants in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme – which evidently works: the recidivism rate among participants in RTA is less than 5 per cent. Too bad more US jails don’t follow suit – not to mention UK ones. 

Kwedar and his co-writer Clint Bentley have added many embellishments to Richardson’s story, often suggested by ex-con cast members; the film is shot partly at Sing Sing itself, partly other atmospheric locations (one a decommissioned jail). The theatrical troupe is joined by the jail’s chief drug dealer, Clarence Maclin, who calls himself ‘Divine Eye’ (Maclin plays himself, and also co-scripted); the tension between the two Divines fuels much of the action.

Initially glowering and suspicious, Divine Eye is slowly drawn into the process of deciding the nature of the next show. Rather than more Shakespeare, he suggests a comedy. The final outcome, from a script initially devised by Brent Buell, called Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, is a gloriously farcical mash-up of Hamlet with elements of Ancient Egypt, Roman gladiators, Wild West gunfights and time travel all thrown in. And it’s a triumph, the audience applauding wildly.

At several points cinematographer Pat Scola sends his 16mm camera tracking meditatively around the men’s faces as they sit in a circle, often with eyes closed. Bryce Dessner’s lyrical score adds a hint of hope for their future. Tragedy isn’t absent; not all the inmates make it. But the film ends on – in every sense – a note of release.

► Sing Sing is in UK cinemas now.