The Tony-winning revival of ‘Parade’ turns a miscarriage of justice into gripping musical drama

Leo Frank, the superintendent of a pencil factory in Georgia, was accused of murdering a young employee, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. His 1913 trial led to his conviction despite shoddy evidence and the manipulations of an ambitious prosecuting attorney, who shamelessly preyed on the prejudices of the jury.

After a series of failed appeals, Frank’s sentence was commuted by the governor, but he was kidnapped and lynched by a mob enraged that his death sentence wasn’t being imposed. The story garnered national attention and threw a spotlight on the fault lines of our criminal justice system.

This dark chapter in American history might not seem suitable for musical treatment. Docudrama would be the safer way to go, given the gravity of the material. But playwright Alfred Uhry and composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown had a vision of what they could uniquely bring to the retelling of Frank’s story.

Olivia Goosman, from left, Jack Roden and the national touring company of “Parade.”

(Joan Marcus)

Their 1998 musical was a critical hit but a difficult sell. More admired than beloved, the show has extended an open challenge to theater artists drawn to the sophisticated majesty of Brown’s Tony-winning score but daunted by the expansive scope of Uhry’s Tony-winning book.

Director Michael Arden has answered the call in his Tony-winning revival, which has arrived at the Ahmanson Theatre in sharp form. The production, which launched at New York City Center before transferring to Broadway, proved that a succès d’estime could also be an emotionally stirring hit.

“Parade” covers a lot of cultural, historical, and political ground. The trial, prefaced by a Civil War snapshot that sets the action in the proper context, takes up much of the first act. But the musical also tells the story of a marriage that grows in depth as external reality becomes more treacherous.

It’s a lot to sort through, but Arden, working hand in hand with scenic designer Dane Laffrey, has conceptualized the staging in a neo-Brechtian fashion that allows the historical background to be seamlessly transmitted. Sven Ortel‘s projections smoothly integrate the necessary information, allowing the focus to be on the human figures caught in the snares of American bigotry and barbarism.

Danielle Lee Greaves, left, and Talia Suskauer in the national tour of “Parade.” Suskauer plays Lucille, Leo’s wife.

(Joan Marcus)

The 2007 Donmar Warehouse revival, directed by Rob Ashford, came to the Mark Taper Forum in 2009 with the promise that it had finally figured out the musical. The production was scaled down, but the full potency of “Parade” wasn’t released. An earnest layer of “importance” clouded the audience’s emotional connection to the characters, even if the Taper was a more hospitable space for this dramatic musical than the Ahmanson.

Arden’s production, at once intimate and epic, comes through beautifully nonetheless on the larger stage. “Parade,” which delves into antisemitism, systemic bias in our judicial system and the power of a wily demagogue to stoke atavistic hatred for self-gain, has a disconcerting timeliness. But the production — momentous in its subject matter, human in its theatrical style — lets the contemporary parallels speak for themselves.

Ben Platt, who played Leo, and Micaela Diamond, who played Leo’s wife, Lucille, made this Broadway revival sing in the most personally textured terms. For the tour, these roles are taken over by Max Chernin and Talia Suskauer. Both are excellent, if less radiantly idiosyncratic. The modesty of their portrayals, however, subtly draws us in.

Chris Shyer, left, and Alison Ewing play Governor Slaton and his wife, two of the more noble figures in the show.

(Joan Marcus)

Chernin’s Leo is a cerebral, Ivy League-educated New Yorker lost in the minutiae of his factory responsibilities. A numbers man more than a people person, he’s a fish out of water in Atlanta, as he spells out in the song “How Can I Call This Home?” Platt played up the comedy of the quintessential Jewish outsider in a land of Confederate memorials and drawling manners. Chernin, more reserved in his manner, seethes with futile terror.

The withholding nature of Chernin’s Leo poses some theatrical risks but goes a long way toward explaining how the character’s otherness could be turned against him in such a malignant way. His Leo makes little effort to fit in, and he’s resented all the more for his lofty detachment.

It takes some time for Suskauer’s Lucille to come into her own, both as a wife and a theatrical character. It isn’t until the second half that, confronting the imminent death of her husband, she asserts herself and rises in stature in both Leo’s eyes and audience’s. But a glimmer of this potential comes out in the first act when Lucille sings with plaintive conviction “You Don’t Know This Man,” one of the standout numbers in a score distinguished less by individual tunes than by the ingenious deployment of an array of musical styles (from military beats to folk ballads and from hymns to jazz) to tell the story from different points of view.

Max Chernin’s Leo is a cerebral, Ivy League-educated New Yorker lost in the minutiae of his factory responsibilities.

(Joan Marcus)

“This Is Not Over Yet” raises hope that Leo and Lucille will find a way to overcome the injustice that has engulfed them. History can’t be revised, but where there’s a song there’s always a chance in the theater. Reality, however, painfully darkens in the poignant duet “All the Wasted Time,” which Lucille and Leo sing from his prison cell — a seized moment of marital bliss from a husband and wife who, as the last hour approaches, have finally become equal partners.

Ramone Nelson, who plays Jim Conley, a Black worker at the factory who is suborned to testify against Leo, delivers the rousing “Blues: Feel The Rain Fall,” a chain gang number that electrifies the house despite the defiance of a man who, having known little justice, has no interest in defending it. Conley has been sought out by Governor Slaton (a gently authoritative Chris Shyer), who has reopened the investigation at Lucille’s urging only to uncover contradictions and inconsistencies in the case. He’s one of the more noble figures, however reluctant, married to a woman (a vivid Alison Ewing) who won’t let him betray his integrity, even if it’s too little, too late.

Hugh Dorsey (Andrew Samonsky), the prosecuting attorney preoccupied with his future, has no regrets after railroading Leo in a politicized trial that will cost him his life. Dorsey is one of the chief villains of the musical, but Samonsky resists melodrama to find a credible psychological throughline for a man who has staked his career on the ends justifying the means.

Lucille (Talia Suskauer, left) and Leo (Max Chernin) sing a poignant duet from his prison cell.

(Joan Marcus)

Britt Craig (Michael Tacconi), a down-on-his-luck reporter who takes delight in demonizing Leo in the press, dances on his desk when he’s landed another slanderous scoop. But even he’s more pathetic than hateful. One sign of the production’s Brechtian nature is the way the structural forces at work in society are revealed to be more culpable than any individual character. The press, like the government and the judiciary, is part of a system that’s poisoned from within.

The harking back to the Civil War isn’t in vain. “Parade” understands that America’s original sin — slavery and the economic apparatus that sanctioned the dehumanization of groups deemed as “other” — can’t be divorced from Leo’s story.

The musical never loses sight of poor Mary Phagan (Olivia Goosman), a flighty underage girl who didn’t deserve to be savagely killed at work. It’s exceedingly unlikely that Leo had anything to do with her murder, but the show doesn’t efface her tragedy, even as it reckons with the gravity of Leo’s.

When Chernin’s Leo raises his voice in Jewish prayer before he is hanged, the memory of a man whose life was wantonly destroyed is momentarily restored. His lynching can’t be undone, but the dignity of his name can be redeemed and our collective sins can be called to account in a gripping musical that hasn’t so much been revived as reborn.