Sing Sing review – Domin­go and Maclin deliv­er pow­er­house performances

We first meet John ​“Divine G” Whit­field (Col­man Domin­go) on a stage, recit­ing Shake­speare­an verse. His expres­sion is far away, bliss­ful: enrap­tured by each word indi­vid­u­al­ly, trans­port­ed by the poet­ry of their pro­ces­sion. It’s only back­stage, as the cast mem­bers change out of their cos­tumes and cor­rec­tions offi­cers lead them back to their cells, that the truth becomes crush­ing­ly clear. 

This is by all accounts true to the expe­ri­ence of the real Whit­field, who while incar­cer­at­ed at Sing Sing played a role in found­ing the still-active Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Through the Arts (RTA) pro­gram, through which those incar­cer­at­ed write, pro­duce, and act in stage pro­duc­tions. Tak­ing part in this troupe, mem­bers can nour­ish them­selves cre­ative­ly, even with­in a prison-indus­tri­al com­plex bent on break­ing their souls. RTA can’t erase the despair of life behind bars, but it offers par­tic­i­pants free­dom and a refuge to do the work of rebuild­ing them­selves. As one mem­ber puts it, ​“We are here to become human again.” 

That’s cer­tain­ly the case for Divine G, an actor and play­wright even before he was incar­cer­at­ed, but it’s also the case for Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin, play­ing him­self), a stand­off­ish new recruit who runs the prison yard while har­bour­ing a secret love of Shake­speare. Egos clash as both men audi­tion for the lead role in their next play, with RTA instruc­tor Brent Buell (Paul Raci) watch­ing on with amuse­ment, but Sing Sing isn’t about their con­flict so much as the rich­er, more hon­est self-expres­sion that this ten­sion grad­u­al­ly yields. 

Kwedar encoun­tered RTA while pro­duc­ing a doc­u­men­tary inside a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison, where he met a young man rais­ing a res­cue dog in his cell; the rec­i­p­ro­cal nature of this heal­ing so upend­ed his assump­tions of incar­cer­a­tion that he dug into var­i­ous pro­grams focused on reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Read­ing a 2005 Esquire arti­cle, ​‘The Sing Sing Fol­lies,’ Kwedar learned of RTA par­tic­i­pants stag­ing an orig­i­nal play inside the New York prison; he then spent sev­en years devel­op­ing Sing Sing with RTA lead­er­ship, vol­un­teers, and par­tic­i­pants. What results is a fic­tion­alised dra­ma infused with the earnest vision of a doc­u­men­tary. Out­side of a few pro­fes­sion­al actors, includ­ing Domin­go and Raci, the rest of the roles are played by for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed per­form­ers; beyond play­ing them­selves, the actors dig deep into pro­cess­ing what they’ve been through. 

Domingo’s strength has long been his inten­si­ty of pres­ence, an emo­tive man­ner of embody­ing that’s at once inti­mate and expan­sive; though the char­ac­ters he brings to life can be com­plex, com­pelling, and self-con­tra­dict­ing. There’s a com­bi­na­tion of pas­sion and pur­pose at play in what he achieves in Sing Sing. 

Often shar­ing the screen with Domin­go, Maclin makes an even more pow­er­ful impres­sion; the scenes in which these two cir­cle each oth­er, grad­u­al­ly low­er­ing their defences and let­ting them­selves become vul­ner­a­ble, are gor­geous­ly ten­der and dra­mat­i­cal­ly vibrant. In a sto­ry about art’s trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial, it’s the won­drous slow bloom of their bond that most dis­tils Sing Sing’s poignant power.

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