It was with trepidation that I attended opening night of “Parade,” now at the Emerson Colonial Theatre in Boston through March 23. After all, the premise of the 2023 multiple Tony Award-winning musical revival is hardly uplifting.
The book by Alfred Uhry (author of “Driving Miss Daisy”) is set in 1913 Atlanta and tells the true story of Leo Frank, a transplanted Brooklyn Jew and pencil factory supervisor who is married to his Jewish boss’s niece, Lucille. As the newlyweds struggle to carve out their lives in the Red Hills of Georgia, Leo is falsely scapegoated for the murder of a 13-year-old white girl in his employ. The rest of the play dramatizes his trial, imprisonment, and 1915 mob lynching.
In the current climate of rampant disinformation and antisemitism, it’s easy to understand why some might eschew entertainment that is grounded in both.
At no point does the 180-minute show (one intermission) shroud the wretched facts of the case and the ginned-up hate, prejudice, and calculated lies that fueled Atlanta’s judicial, political, and journalistic engines. Yet, like alchemy, first-rate staging, talent, and especially Jason Robert Brown’s rapturous Tony Award-winning score of 29 songs transform this cheerless tale into a riveting musical production that scratches well below the surface to examine just what made the Jim Crow South tick.
The stage is minimally set (design by Dane Laffrey) with a high and low platform that will magically evoke the Franks’ home, a witness box, a factory, a soapbox, a cell, and a governor’s mansion. Throughout the show, background projections display real photographs, names, and dates of the play’s characters as well as archival photos of 1910s Atlanta, newspaper stories, and the “Leo Frank Lynching” memorial plaque in Marietta, Georgia. These both make the action easier to follow and remind us that “Parade” is based on truth.
The play opens in 1863 Marietta (“The Old Red Hills of Home”) as a young soldier leaves his lover for battle. Fifty years later, Atlantans still romanticize and mythologize the glories of the Civil War’s “Lost Cause” with Confederacy Day, which is when we first meet Leo and Lucille Frank.
“Why would anyone want to celebrate losing a war?” Leo (a pitch-perfect, exceptional Max Chernin) asks his wife. Wiry, prickly, and bespectacled, he struggles to fathom the mores of Atlantans. “For the life of me, I can’t understand how God could create people who are Jewish and Southern at the same time.”
Lucille (Talia Suskauer, whose voice seems directly wired to her emotions) doesn’t understand Leo’s Yankee manners any better than he grasps the ways of a Jewish southern belle. We are left wondering what drew these two to each other in the first place. Their singing selves couple in a soaring intimacy that their characters just can’t mirror.
Their marital conflict pales compared to the troubles that unfold when the body of Mary Phagan is discovered in the factory. Two suspects are ripe for the picking: Newt Lee, the Black night watchman, and Leo Frank. That Leo is a self-absorbed workaholic who carries himself with a supercilious self-importance may make him hard to like, but his downfall is no less tragic.
District Attorney Hugh Dorsey (a believably slimy Andrew Samonsky) needs a conviction, and hanging another Black “ain’t enough.” The professional boost he seeks requires something more. This time, he’ll need to hang “the Jew.” He suborns testimony from many sources, threatening and cajoling even the Franks’ loyal maid, Minnie. Ex-con Jim Conley (Ramone Nelson in a barnstorming, show-stopper of a performance) fabricates eyewitness evidence to save his own skin, yet ends up back on the chain gang when Donley double-crosses him. Newspaperman Britt Craig (Michael Tacconi) hails the resurrection of his career as he stokes antisemitic hysteria and catches the eye of his editor.
Leo is swiftly convicted, sentenced to death, and jailed. Director Michael Arden’s staging at several critical moments expands “Parade’s” theatricality and our access to Leo’s opaque interiority.
Act II shifts to Leo and Lucille’s marriage, which is strengthened by his imprisonment and their joint efforts to prove his innocence. Eventually, Gov. Slaton (a solid Chris Shyer) heeds Lucille’s pleas and, after investigating, commutes Leo’s sentence to life. His fate has already been sealed in the book of public opinion, however, and he is kidnapped and hanged.
The cast of vocal performers (particularly the leads and Nelson) is extraordinary, and they have a lot to work with in Brown’s marvelous score. Backed by a terrific orchestra, Brown’s Sousa-style marches, work songs, haunting duets, and raw blues achieve more than a page of dialogue might. While injustice and inhumanity are ever present, they simmer and percolate rather than boil over.
As “Parade” points out, although Leo Frank’s death sentence was commuted, the case, reopened in 2019, is ongoing. Mary’s killer was never found. Unlike the more than 300 cases overturned thanks to the Innocence Project, he has never been exonerated. Θ
For tickets and more information, visit emersoncolonialtheatre.com.
