“The Scottsboro Boys” has been extended to July 22 at American Conservatory Theater!  Not a surprise – to me, at least.

I love the theater and go as often as I can, but I seldom hit the trifecta of being entertained, challenged and electrified all at once.  When the lights came up at the end of the performance I saw, I was speechless.  I tweeted immediately that it was a must, must see show, but 140 characters weren’t nearly enough to do the job.  I knew I needed a major debrief.  Fortunately, my friend David turned to me and said, “We’re going to have to go somewhere and talk about this.”

To me, that’s one of the signs of a great show – that you don’t leave it behind when you go home.

Make no mistake, this one is hard.  It’s not “The Music Man.”  I wasn’t sure how a musical could even be made from the story of nine young black men and boys dragged through the Depression-era courts of Alabama for allegedly gang-raping two white women who were widely reported to be prostitutes.  And when I heard it was staged as a minstrel show, I was even more leery.  Good notices and Tony nominations aside, this sounded pretty dodgy.

But it works.  It works and it takes you on an amazing ride, juxtaposing deceptively happy tunes that call back to “Chicago,” “Dreamgirls,” and even college glee clubs with the ugliness of the story.  As it turns out, a minstrel show is an ideal way of retelling all of this.

I’ve heard people have walked out – which is probably why there is no intermission.  Don’t do that.  It will be uncomfortable.  It’s supposed to be.  It will also be one of the best evenings of theater you’ve ever attended.  Stay through to the end, then go and have coffee or a drink and talk about it.   Believe me, you’ll want to.