REVIEW: Parade tackles uncomfortable American history at Proctors
Photos by Joan Marcus from the Broadway production
“...an extraordinarily convincing argument for the best American musical about the ugliness of America.”
Parade is the first musical by composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown that takes on a story (after his song cycle “Songs For a New World”) and what a story it is!
With book by Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhury (Driving Miss Daisy), Brown takes up the case of Leo Frank, a young Brooklyn Jewish man supplanted to Atlanta to be superintendent of the National Pencil Company where one Confederates Memorial Day he is accused of raping a 13 year old employee in his charge. There is no evidence, only suspicious testimony from a group of young girls and an ex-convict. The local press fans the flames of anti-semitism and nativist bigotry in the community ensuring an unfair trial. He is convicted and sentenced to hang and if you haven’t heard of this piece of history, I’ll leave it there to preserve what little narrative tension there is as far as what’s going to happen in the story.
The musical, directed by Hal Prince, premiered at Lincoln Center and did not do terribly well with the critics. Its producers, Livent and RCA, pulled their support but it has its staunch admirers, as does Jason Robert Brown who won the Tony for Best Score for Parade. The production playing at Proctors through Friday, 1/17 is created after the 2023 Broadway Revival which starred Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, directed by Michael Arden (currently represented on Broadway by Maybe Happy Ending) which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Director. Proctors in Schenectady was chosen to tech the show before it heads out on a nine-month tour which means all the technical elements (sound, lights, costumes and sets) were built over a period of weeks and tried out before the show is ready to open. JRB and director Arden were even in town for an extended stay.
It is a difficult musical to sell and could even open up a debate about whether it’s appropriate material for a musical but it is all the more rewarding for its challenges. Arden is at the top of his game as director and creates an electric community of a cast which creates masterpiece after masterpiece of stage pictures keeping the story hurtling forward to its still shocking conclusion. He sets the stage with Brown in the opening number, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” in which a young Confederate soldier heading off to battle pledges his love before we jump ahead 50 years and the men of the chorus seated on stage stand and suit up in their Johnny Reb uniforms to set out to march in the 1913 Confederate’s Memorial Parade. Leo Frank wonders how they can celebrate a war that they’ve lost. The Confederate flag is waved throughout the evening and we are under siege by this bigoted pride.
The production originated at Encores, which stages somewhat neglected musicals at City Center with minimal sets and a quick rehearsal time. The entire cast is onstage for much of the show observing the action which takes place on top of a raised platform that could be a coffin or a display case and here serves as the courtroom, the Frank house, the Governor's mansion and Leo’s jail cell which he occupies in full view of the audience throughout the intermission. It underlines our complicity in the story as passive spectators. The set is by Dane Laffrey, fantastic lighting by Heather Gilbert and vivid projections by Sven Ortel.
The music with orchestrations by Daniel Felsenfeld and conducted by Music Director Charlie Alterman is an Americana feast, featuring everything from rag to blues to spirituals and soaring anthems. The voices in the cast – Max Chernin, Talia Suskauer and Ramone Nelson as Jim Conley – are glorious. Chernin and Suskauer hit the evening’s peak together with the crossover hit, “This is Not Over Yet.” It’s the extra lift, the key change that thrills and excites you into thinking this story could possibly turn out differently than it does.
Chernin and Suskauer also come back at the end of the show with the beautiful, elegiac, “All the Wasted Time.” Suskauer whoops and soars all night long and goes from the young, naive wife who is nervous to attend the trial for all the people staring at her to the staunch defender who buttonholes the governor into reconsidering opening the case against her convicted husband. Chernin has the diffident air of the young supervisor in over his head and his cool demeanor may be held against him as the town sees him as an “other.” They’re a terrific couple and a great reason to check out this show.
I loved the staging of this show. The way it moves from scene to scene, the physical life of the actors (the bounding, jumping teenager Jack Roden), the projections that blew up to close-ups, the flags waving, the frozen postures of the mob at the penultimate moment and especially the young girl's testimony spotlighted in high relief in counterpoint to the slowed down background.
Parade is an extraordinarily convincing argument for the best American musical about the ugliness of America. Within this horrific story though, there is the passionate argument for the country and its citizens to listen to the better angels of our nature and fight for justice, equality and inclusion for all.
Parade runs through Friday, 1/17 at Proctors. Tickets: www.atproctors.org or 518-346-6204.
