Sing Sing review – Colman Domingo is larger than life in big-hearted prison drama

Inspired by a project that uses the arts for rehabilitation, this is an uplifting, energetic film – but Domingo’s showy performance is a little out of place

There’s charm, energy and optimism in this big-hearted film, inspired by the Rehabilitation Through the Arts project that teaches theatre skills to US prisoners. The movie’s genesis is an Esquire magazine article from 2005 about an ensemble fantasy-comedy musical performed by inmates of Sing Sing maximum security facility in New York state. The movie invites us to hear the words in the title as joyful imperatives. It is performed largely by genuine former inmates playing themselves, featuring rehearsal scenes interspersed with variously tense or moving private conversations. There is a resemblance to Alan Parker’s Fame, to which the film playfully alludes, although the proceedings are evidently too serious to allow for the more obvious comparison with Max Bialystock’s song Prisoners of Love at the end of The Producers.

Everything here is so uplifting that it seems churlish to find fault. But however rousing and admirably intended, there is something surreal and out of place in the characterisation of its leading role, which is dominatingly and fascinatingly played by the excellent Colman Domingo, whose many awards include the London critics’ circle prize for innovation named after the late Derek Malcolm. Domingo plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, an inmate who was in real life a visionary and inspirational driving force behind the Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme and wrote many plays for it. The real Divine G has a cameo, while the group’s star player, a serious tough guy who was transformed by his encounter with Shakespeare, is Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, here playing himself and doing so very capably. Most of the other roles also are played by former prisoners, but the group’s director, Brent Buell, is played by Paul Raci (known for the 2019 film Sound of Metal, in which he was the deafness-therapy counsellor being tough on Riz Ahmed).

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