The New Yorker:

A middle-aged, murderous Tom Ripley; a boozy, stagestruck Mary Todd Lincoln; an unlikely pair of singers at the Grammys—these were the acts that broke through the noise of this fractious, tumultuous year.

By Michael Schulman

Midway through the A24 film “Sing Sing,” Divine G, an incarcerated man played with poise and panache by Colman Domingo, appears before a parole board. Divine G is the leading light of a prison theatre troupe, part of a real-life program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. “It’s something I’m very proud of,” he brags. “So, are you acting at all during this interview?” his skeptical inquisitor asks. Divine G’s face slowly falls. “Actually, that’s not the intention of acting,” he stammers. “Acting is just to, you know, process.” But he knows his cause is lost.
Domingo’s was one of many performances that struck me this year, whether on the stage or screen. In “Sing Sing,” he acts alongside actual veterans of the program, including Clarence (Divine Eye) Maclin, who participated in more than two dozen shows during a seventeen-year stint at Sing Sing. Watching Maclin seize the screen, you couldn’t possibly equate acting with lying; his performance is the ultimate form of truth-telling, because it shows how he learned the tools to reveal himself to us.

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