How it’s New York:Â Leo Frank, the play’s protagonist, hails from Brooklyn.
How it’s Irish: Many people of Irish and Scottish descent populated the South, then and now.
Parade upset me so much I had to have a drink at intermission to face Act II.
But not because of its issues.
It is upsetting to see good talents in service of something silly. When dead little Mary Phagan flew in on a trapeze at the kangaroo court trial of Leo Frank, I had to giggle. Sorry.
If Parade really were a parade, it would have bands crashing into each other. The show, which kind of sort of tells the story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man in Atlanta who was lynched after being falsely accused of murdering a young factory employee, feels unbalanced and uneven.
And boy, if you’re from Georgia, you’re going to feel deeply insulted by the time the play ends. It’s even more disappointing because the bookwriter, Alfred Uhry, has written wonderful portrayals of Jews in the south, including Driving Miss Daisy.
It’s getting a lot of love on Broadway because of its theme of antisemitism: but for this Jewish girl, the antisemitism is not nearly there enough. It seems more the story of an outsider who has some trouble making friends. The best parts of the show are about the marriage, but that’s not a story, just a snapshot. The issues bump into one another, making the overall musical a bumpy march.
There is a story to be told here and the play hints at it, but the hints about who stepped in to plead for him — including the notoriously antisemitic Henry Ford, he of the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion — are not really developed.
There are some lovely songs and some heartbreaking performances. Its themes have some resonance. That’s enough for many.
Not for me.
There is next to no suspense and not a lot of revelation except a kind of “the South is bad.” I don’t think that was the creators’ intent, but starting with the Civil War and having that young soldier be present at the lynching sends that message. By the way it is a very courtly lynching: Frank is hanged with almost an apology, and he is not mutilated or insulted. Yeah, no. In real life, according to the History Channel, a crowd of about 3,000 formed, and people pecked at his body while photographers took pictures.
The show was originally staged by Harold Prince in 1998. Maybe then its revelations about lingering Southern prejudice felt new, I don’t know. The reminder that Confederate soldiers might be bigoted Klansman in 1915 is worthwhile as we have a tendency to forget that people live over century breaks (I get a kick now and then of remembering that Lucy in A Room with a View literally could be at the Howard Johnson’s Don Draper visits). It’s only 50 years later, after all, and anyone in their 70s in 1915 was drafting age during the War Between the States.
It’s not a spoiler, because it’s history. I’m sympathetic, and yet, there have been wonderful stories made out of, say, the fate of Anne Boleyn and yet we know what’s going to happen.
Turning the story of Frank into a courtroom drama is just a terrible idea. What can possibly happen, except what does? The trial was dramatic in its day, with many articles about it. But that does not make it dramatic onstage.
Leo Frank, a Jew from Brooklyn, marries an Atlanta Jewish gal and runs her father’s pencil factory there. A little girl of 13 is murdered on his watch, and he’s railroaded in a corrupt trial with antisemitic overtones to a guilty verdict. While awaiting his appeal, after his death sentence has been commuted, he is kidnapped and lynched. One of the people who lynches him is the Confederate soldier of the prologue.
Despite some fun early on with Frank’s Yiddish inflections– Ben Platt as Frank (Evan Handler) has a sweet, deadpan style– the show does not really develop the fish out of water angle. The railroading, complete with what appear to be extras from The Crucible, is so obvious it is dull. There are corrupt newspapermen and politicians, none of it shocking.
As his wife, Micaela Diamond sings sweetly and displays affecting yearning.
The most fun song in the show is an early one where little Mary (pert and adorable Erin Rose Doyle) flirts with a suitor, saying she cannot go to “The Picture Show.”
The photographs of real people of the era serve to confuse more than enlighten, as used in backdrops. What are we to make of a random picture of Black servants, and then a scene with two Black people singing? I guess the creators were hoping for a kind of portrait of the past, but it all comes across as rather shallow. Set design by Dane Laffrey is confusing more than effective. Michael Arden’s direction works best in the two-handed scenes between husband and wife. The “gee he’s corrupt” songs and dances (literally) just seem dumb.
“The Old Red Hills of Home,” the Confederate soldier’s song, returns in the finale. It’s worth remembering that Civil War soldiers would still be alive in 1913, when the play takes place, but the show does not do much with that beyond the obvious.
Somehow Parade seems to convey that Frank and his family were the only Jews in Atlanta. This is so far from the truth.
A quick search on the web showed me that B’nai Brith created the Anti-Defamation League as a result of trying to defend Frank. Yes, THAT ADL. The one that still exists, now independent of B’nai B’rith (and the play never lets on there even is a B’nai B’rith in Atlanta.)
Jewish families fled Atlanta– we never learn about that.
Many, many clergy of all faiths spoke out in his favor after the obvious hearsay-based trial. Now that would be a play that would hold my attention.
