Parade

Musical (1998)
Book by Alfred Uhry
Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Co-conceived by Harold Prince
Directed by Michael Arden
Colonial Theater
Theater District, Boston
March 11-23, 2025

Music Director: Charlie Alterman; Orchestrations by Daniel Felsenfeld; Co-choreographers: Lauren Yalango-Grant, Christopher Cree Grant; Scenic Designer: Dane Laffey; Lighting Designer: Heather Gilbert; Projection Designer: Sven Ortel

With Max Chernin (Leo Frank), Talia Suskauer (Lucille Frank), Chris Shyer (Governor Slaton, Griffin Binnicker (Tom Watson), Ben Cherrington (Officer Ivey, Thomas Blackhawk, et al), Emily Rode DeMartino (Essie, et al), Bailee Endebrock (Monteen et al), Bailee Endebrock (Monteen, et al), Alison Ewing (Sally Slaton), Caroline Fairweather, (Nurse, Daily Hopkins, et al), Olivia Goosman (Mary Phagan), Danielle Le Greaves (Minnie McKniight), Evan Harrington (Old Soldier, Judge Roan), Jenny Hickman (Mrs. Phagan) Trevor James (Young Soldier, et al), Robert Knight (Newt Lee), Sophia Manicone (Iola Stover), Trista Moldovan (Nina Formby, et al), Prentiss E. Mouton (Riley), Ramone Nelson (Jim Conley), Oluchi Nwaokorie (Angela), Ethan Riordan (Mr. Turner, et al), Jack Roden (Frankie Epps), Andrew Samonsky (Hugh Dorsey), Jason Simon (Det. Starnes, James Gantt, et al), Michael Tacconi (Britt Craig), Brian Vaughn (Luther Rosser, Mr. Peavy)

Leo Frank (Max Chernin), a Jewish man of twenty-nine, had grown up in New York but had married Lucille (Talia Suskauer), a Jewish woman from Atlanta and has moved there to work at a company owned by Lucille’s family. The year was 1913 and though fifty years after the Civil War, the wounds of the loss by the South are still very evident. A young girl, Mary Phagan (Olivia Goosman), who works at the factory Leo runs is brutally murdered, and Leo is targeted by the local authorities as the suspect. Witnesses are lined up and Frank is convicted and sentenced to death. Lucille stands up for her husband and manages to engender the kind of support that might help his case. As a result, Frank’s death sentence is commuted, but, shortly afterwards, he is lynched by an angry group of Georgians who have decided he should die, and they hang him.

Though the above summary gives away most of the plot, the real surprise in the show has something to do with Lucille (detailed below in the spoiler section). Most of the above summary is actually presented at the outset of the show via one of the many illuminating historical projections (done by projection designer Sven Ortel) that are used throughout and which give the production a compelling sense of authenticity. In effect, at the outset, one is presented with a newspaper account of the case which details much of it even before the action begins. Following, and during the whole performance, photos of the actual historical characters who are presented on stage are placed behind the action on the projection screen and the effect is both penetrating and chilling.

It’s astonishing that author Alfred Uhry and composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown, along with the guidance of co-conceiver Harold Prince, were able to successfully mount an entertaining and moving musical that is filled with violence, racism, anti-Semitism and a good amount of vivid accounting of the long-retained resentment of the North by the South after the Civil War. Indeed, Parade is both shocking, dire and heartbreaking, and, as well, a rousing, though dramatic and poignant, entertainment.

Neither the book nor the lyrics hold back on the themes nor soften them. Issues of anti-Semitism are presented forcefully and directly, and certainly themes of racism are invoked as well. The music by Jason Robert Brown has some familiar Broadway-musical memes, but there is a lot in the composition which is offbeat and innovative. That unexpected element gives it the amount of drama and uncertainty that the book deserves, and the more standard elements of muusical composition offer a familiarity which enables the show to be not only powerfully dramatic but oddly entertaining.

Interestingly, the show is fundamentally about injustice, but it is equally a love story. How Lucille and Leo navigate his indictment and condemnation is at the core of the story and makes this a powerful, if ultimately tragic, tale of devotion and commitment.

As Leo, Max Chernin is spot-on, both dramatically and vocally. His demeanor as a nice and responsible Jewish guy combines with a courageous and forthright disposition to make his portrayal not only vividly respectable but heroic. It’s a wonderful blend of qualities and Chernin rises to the task magnificently. In his solos, like How Can I Call This Home, about his emigration to the South after growing up in New York, and It’s Hard To Speak My Heart, a moving and beautifully sung account at the end of Act I, Chernin shows his considerable vocal talents.

As Lucille, Talia Suskauer also packs a vocal punch, particularly evident in solos like What Are You Waiting For in which she describes her deciding to marry Leo, and in You Don’t Know This Man in which she defends her husband’s character to sensationalist journalist Britt Craig (Michael Tacconi). Suskauer’s Southern accent strikes one at first as not entirely compelling, but once she starts singing that matters not at all.

Chernin and Suskauer also have some totally lovely duets together, particularly in This Is Not Over Yet about their determination to fight the conviction and set Leo free.

Other characters are vividly drawn and some have distinctive vocal opportunities. As Frankie Epps, the young man who asks out to the movies and is refused by the murder victim, Mary Phagan, Jack Roden has a rousing number in It Don’t Make Sense, which makes his character which is a little suspect throughout a bit more appealing and sympathetic than might otherwise be thought.

Calling out the issue of racism along with that of anti-Semitism, is a nicely done duet at the opening of Act II by Prentiss E. Mouton as Riley and Oluchi Nwaokorie as Angela, in which the suggestion that if a young black girl had been murdered there would not have been such a legal fuss made about it.

Michael Tacconi, as the needy and driven yellow journalist Britt Craig, gets to do his thing very nicely and with zip in the lively number Real Big News.

As Governor Slaton, Chris Shyer does a commendable acting job as does Alison Ewing as his wife Sally Slaton who gets to give one of the truly great lines in the show.

The sizeable company as a whole very successfully brings to life the entire scene of the action, including the false portrayal of the accused in the despicable but rousing Come Up To My Office.

The orchestral accompaniment is exceedingly competent and lyrical, with some wonderfully transparent solos like the one on the violin shortly after It Don’t Make Sense.

The title Parade is taken from a theme that becomes central to the action, a recognition of an annual celebration and memorial for those Confederate soldiers who fell in the Civil War, a constant reminder throughout the show of the issue of Southern resentment for the North, in addition to the pervasive theme of anti-Semitism, which informs the drama.

There are a few staging choices that seemed a bit hard to fathom or a little off. In the very beginning, a couple, presumably in the Civil War era, make passionate love center stage. It resonates with a scene near the end of the show where Leo and Lucille make love in his jail cell, but, other than that, it is not too clear what that initial scene is meant to represent other than the passion of the South. There are also a couple of scenes in which a couple of male actors self-consciously bare their muscular torsos in such a way that seems oddly unnecessary and, in the dramatic context, a bit off. And though the setting of the parade theme with adornments reminding one of the Confederate memorial celebration for which the show is named is evident on the set throughout the show, it’s not clear that the constant reminder works well with the variations in the narrative though one certainly understands the limitations of stagecraft involved. Nonetheless, these are minor distractions from an otherwise beautifully staged show.

The show opens with the usual please shut off your phones, etc announcement, but, in a brilliant turn, the recorded announcement is given by Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, a wonderful and important recognition that Georgia has come a long way since the time of the show’s action in 1913, and certainly since the Civil War fifty years before that.

Overall: An excellent production, with a moving book and score about prejudice and injustice.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)