REVIEW: Lyrics From Lockdown Brings Broadway to UHCL

Bryonn Bain’s critically acclaimed multimedia show Lyrics From Lockdown had its Texas debut at the University of Houston-Clear Lake Bayou Theater on Saturday night, followed by a talkback with Emmy Award-winning director Rob Reiner. The show is set to open on Broadway in 2025.

The following review will contain spoilers for the show.

Lyrics From Lockdown follows the true story of its creator, Bryonn Bain, and his wrongful arrest. The show expertly weaves through Bain’s life and that of Nanon Williams, a wrongfully incarcerated individual who was sentenced to death at seventeen years old. Alongside these narratives, Lyrics From Lockdown stays true to its multimedia classification–guiding its audience through song, spoken word, interactive call and response bits, and videos telling Williams’ story through letters written from him to Bain.

The show touches on various sensitive topics, exploring Bain’s experience with three public defenders and their various shortcomings, interactions with the correctional officers and guards, and the thoughts and feelings running through his head as the beats move along. We learn about Bain’s family, their history, their personalities, and Bain’s memories with them, including what struck me the most, a poem about his son Indigo and his artistic impression. Aside from the content and its artistic execution, Lyrics From Lockdown boasts a small crew of on-stage performers. Bain peruses, parades, dances, and walks about the stage embodying the characters he’s telling us about as three musical performers play the score, giving the show an extremely intimate and personal feel, thus allowing the audience to focus on Bain’s story and the lesson he wishes us to learn from it rather than just costumes, actors, or dynamics. This is present in the way the singular onstage performer is presented to the audience–Bain wears an all-black outfit with some simple costume changes throughout the show’s arc. The simplicity of it all is what makes it so beautiful–every aspect of Lyrics From Lockdown has been meticulously crafted by both Bain and the show’s producers to zero the audience’s attention in on the stories being told–they made ninety minutes feel like thirty.

Nanon Williams, the other individual whose story is being told, was put on death row at seventeen years old in 1992. Thirteen years later in 2005, the Supreme Court declared the execution of incarcerated individuals who were minors when the crime occurred unconstitutional, therefore turning Williams’ death sentence into a life sentence. Williams has gone on to write many books and obtain several university degrees, including those from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, even being declared valedictorian. Throughout the show, Williams’ story is told in retrospect through the form of letters he sent to Bain in an attempt to start a conversation about what life on death row is really like. The show concludes with Bain’s response to his letters.

After the show, a talkback featuring Emmy Award-winning director Rob Reiner guided the audience through conversations on why Bain and Williams’ stories are important, what pushed

the show’s creators to bring them to larger audiences, as well as what audience members looking to help support the cause can do, including raising awareness, supporting prison education programs like that at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and educating others on the incarceration system in the United States.

The talkback concluded with a reading of a letter from Nanon Williams to his younger self, read by his sister.

Lyrics From Lockdown creator Bryonn Bain has also published a book detailing his story at large, titled Rebel Speak. It is available for purchase at Kindred Stories, a Black-owned bookstore in Third Ward at 2304 Stuart Street, as well as on their website, kindredstorieshtx.com.