Sing Sing Is a Humanizing Portrait of the Dehumanized

The film opens on a stage: it’s the final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo) is delivering Lysander’s famous lines: “And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ / The jaws of darkness do devour it up / so quick bright things come to confusion.” The actors take a bow, basking in their audience’s applause.

Backstage, the men buzz, congratulating each other on a great night as they form a line. They’ve changed into green uniforms and they’re observed by a guard. These are not just actors, but prisoners.

Sing Sing tells the story of a theater troupe inside the Ossining, New York, maximum-security prison of the same name: Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a nonprofit that was founded in 1996 and has since expanded to seven more facilities across the state. It’s a tender portrait of the creative capabilities and emotional lives of a group of men who have been cast off by society as something less than human. What’s more: the overwhelming majority of the cast are actual RTA alumni, playing versions of themselves.

The film follows the theater members through the months following the Shakespeare production, in which they break from the usual fare of time-honored classics like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, much to the chagrin of RTA’s thespian cofounder Divine G. Instead, the group decides to perform a maximalist work of patent absurdity, motivated by the suggestion of Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a tough-guy newcomer to RTA, that their fellow inmates might enjoy something lighthearted.

Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, the resulting play, is outright goofy. It’s spun up over a weekend by Brent Buell (Paul Raci), the group’s director. The plot involves mummies and pirates, time travel and Robin Hood and Freddy Krueger and cowboys, a hodgepodge of elements incorporating every RTA member’s suggestions. It…