Colman Domingo has a habit of making me weep. Over the past decade, the 54-year-old Philadelphia-born actor has been consistently excellent in everything from Selma to If Beale Street Could Talk , Zola to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , Candyman to The Color Purple, not to mention his Emmy-winning turn in Euphoria and recent Oscar-nominated work in Rustin . (In truth, he’s been toiling on stage and screen for another two decades before that, collecting a Tony and Olivier nod for his performance in The Scottsboro Boys in 2011 and 2014 respectively.
) But, in his latest tearjerker, the touching, lyrical and surprisingly uplifting Sing Sing , he reaches another level entirely. Co-written by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, and helmed by the latter, the sweeping, sensitive drama isn’t quite like anything you’ve seen before. At its centre is a group of men, incarcerated at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility and participating in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts Programme, a real-life initiative which supports them to put on plays, build communities, attempt to begin the healing process and, hopefully, emotionally prepare for life after prison.
(Remarkably, while the national rate of people returning to prison after a sentence in the US is 60 per cent, it’s less than 3 per cent for RTA members, per the organisation’s website .) Domingo takes the part of John “Divine G” Whitfield, a veteran of the programme who’s written and acted in several RTA productions, as.