REVIEW: PARADE—Deryndale Productions & The Electric Lodge
- TheShowReport
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
PARADE May be the Saddest Musical Ever, but its Sadness is of the Elegiac Kind that Awakens the Heart.
OCTOBER 23—LOS ANGELES
Inspired by the true story of Leo Frank (Adam Fried), a Jewish man who was lynched in Marietta, Georgia in 1915 for the gruesome murder of a young girl at his factory, this musical provides a painstakingly rendered chart of the wheels of injustice.
And it never lets up on the moral blindness and corruption of his persecutors, and its insistence of the innocence of its protagonist, railroaded to a conviction on the tainted testimony of his janitor, Jim Conley (Carter Michael), desperate to save his own hide.
27 years ago, on the Broadway stage, PARADE was dark and solemn, and even somewhat bloated with self-importance. Scaled down slightly to a more intimate size here, The Electric Lodge brings a whole new audience to this work, depicting the power of anti-Semitism, bigotry and venality in the South in the early 1900’s.
The resulting production, set to play in Los Angeles through November 2nd, is not only filled with podium-thumping screed but also portrays a compelling story shaped by a young composer of talent and invention, Jason Robert Brown, and a Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright, Alfred Uhry (''Driving Miss Daisy''), solidifying its impressive provenance without exception in the world of musical theater.
PARADE begins with a wistful musical timeline of sorts, as a young Confederate soldier (Jeremy Ethan Harris) prepares to head off to war, and as his crippled older embodiment (Robert W. Laur) picks up where he left off, he is still singing a soaring ode to his Southern homeland, “The Old Red Hills of Home.” So now, the fertile soil of resentment has been ideally plowed, and is ready for the events that follow, when vigilantes slip the noose around Frank's neck and seal one of America's most controversial martyrdoms.
You can see right away we're not talking "The Sound of Music" here. In reality, however, this production of PARADE is not even as dark as other works (such as "Titanic," "Sweeney Todd," "Evita") that have expanded the canvas of what mainstream musicals can do, for all of those shows used glamour, ghoulish fun or feel-good heroics to perk up the somber subject matter. PARADE stoops to none of those tricks, so whatever else you can say about this musical, you have to say it’s one that never loses its nerve.
On one level, PARADE is the story of a marriage — an arranged union between two unlikely souls. Mr. Fried’s Leo Frank is a nervous, obsessive, Brooklyn-born, Cornell University-educated Jew with a squeamishness about sex and a powerful sense that he is a fish out of water in the South. Lucille (Bryce Hamilton), his wife of three years, is an assimilated Atlanta-bred Jew who wants children and romance. And Director Saundra McClain has cast these roles in a way that suggests a definite mismatch (at least initially), with Mr. Fried as the physically small, brainy, ill-at-ease Leo, and Ms. Hamilton as a taller, fuller, more maternal figure.
But when the body of little Mary Phagen (deftly played by Sophia Roth) is found in the pencil factory’s basement by the Black night watchman, Newt Lee (exceptional work by Jabriel Shelton), the push is on to quickly identify and convict the perpetrator. Not surprisingly, Leo is the easy initial suspect. Especially because the powers that be in Atlanta have bigger fish to fry. Governor John Slaton (a slickly polished Sean Patrick Murtagh), for instance, hopes to climb the political ladder, as does local prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (Kyle Caldwell, ideally smarmy), who cunningly coaches perjured testimony from witnesses
''Come Up to My Office,'' a splendid sequence sung during the extended trial scene becomes a highlight in the musical as we see three young women (played by Joelle Tshudy, Julia Maguire and Megan Roddy) testifying through song how Leo would spy on them, make them indecent proposals and fondle them. Suddenly the shy, tautly strung Leo jumps up from the defense table in a fantasy sequence and becomes the lewd, sweaty-palmed pervert the girls alluded to, exulting in the licentiousness they have just described.
This burst of theatrical fantasy briefly kindles the show's murky landscape with the force of a coup de theatre, allowing you to see other talented acting dimensions of Adam Fried breaking character from the normally disciplined, buttoned-up Leo and his otherwise raging psyche.
The trial sets a firecracker as well under two others hungry to make their mark — the seemingly ever-present newspaper reporter Britt Craig (Thomas Patrick Riley, lighting up the stage with every turn), who rides the murder story to fame and fortune along with writer Tom Watson (Paul Sean Ward in top-notch form), a Bible-thumping, extreme right-wing publisher of the newspaper, The Jeffersonian, who disfavors Leo and is motivated by anti-Semitism, to the point of denying Jesus was a Jew. This also leads to a series of hate marches, rallies and demonstrations against Leo from various groups and the public.
Another pinnacle in the show is ''A Rumblin' and a Rollin,''' sung by Jabriel Shelton and a small group off-stage, who sings bitterly of the public's growing hysteria and impending mob violence against Leo Frank, and brings up a question: Would people be so outraged about Mary Phagan’s murder if she was Black? The song evokes the freedom marches that would not come until the 1960's, when hundreds of activists, many of them Jewish, invaded the South to fight the good fight, losing their lives in many cases.
Eventually, Sean Patrick Murtagh’s Governor John Slaton (''We gotta get to the bottom of this one fast”), prodded mostly by Leo's wife, Lucille, commutes Leo’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Shortly after, however, he was hauled out of a Georgia jail and lynched by a mob whose members were never identified. And though there were persuasive theories involving the case pointing to other people, no one else was ever charged.
And then there’s Carter Michael, who plays Jim Conley, the janitor at the pencil factory and the man thought to be the true killer, in one of the most entertaining chain gang scenes ever put on a stage, with the audience completely astonished, and perhaps even just a little frightened. Mr. Michael's “Feel the Rain Fall,” a bluesy allusion to shades of “Road to Hell” from “Hadestown,” thanks in no small part to Mr. Michael’s deep, soulful vocals and excellent acting was indeed a highlight of the show.
Director McClain's lush casting pays off handsomely throughout the show, with all contributing incisive, effective performances and uniformly clarion voices led by Mr. Fried’s focused, uncompromising turn as Leo, opposite a lovely Bryce Hamilton (with exquisite vocals) as his devoted, strong-minded wife, Lucille. Ms. Hamilton does a beautiful job of suggesting Lucille’s awakening. She and Mr. Fried join in a heavy-hearted “All the Wasted Time” deep in the second act. Mr. Fried then (managing to maintain a sense of inner strength and dignity) offers us a crucial identity-confirming rendering of the Hebrew prayer, “Sh’ma.”
Additional noteworthy performances included Kiera Morris as Minnie McKnight; David Callander as Officer Ivey and Luther Rosser; Karen Macarah as Mrs. Phagan; and Chloe Renee Gillott and Joshua Luper as Ensemble.
Mr. Fried’s tamped-down performance — trimmed gently in pragmatic inflections that add an ample dose of stoic detachment from the public — accentuates the qualities that Mr. Uhry depicts in his book: all business, unemotional, slightly ornery and inwardly seething with contempt for the men who persecute him, Leo can bring himself to seek sympathy only in the sober, faltering voice of reason in the song “It’s Hard to Speak My Heart.” But by the time he finds his voice, it has become obvious that a mania for retribution, combined with suspicion of outsiders, has closed the minds of his persecutors to rational thought.
Interestingly enough, those kinds of minds are still hard to change even now. Ironically, the Leo Frank case has even led to both a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the birth of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights organization. And, in one form or another, both still hard at work at this very moment.
DERYNDALE PRODUCTIONS & THE ELECTRIC LODGE PRESENT PARADE; Book by ALFRED UHRY; Music & Lyrics by JASON ROBRET BROWN; Co-Conceived and Directed on Broadway by HAROLD PRINCE; DIRECTED BY SAUNDRA MCCLAIN; ASSISTANT DIRECTED BY JON SPRIK; CHOREOGRAPHER RAÉLLE DORFAN; MUSICAL DIRECTOR JONNY PERL & ALONSO PIRIO; ASSISTANT MUSIC DIRECTOR TOBY ROSE HINNERS; SCENIC DESIGNER IZAIAH MARTINEZ; LIGHTING DESIGNER MARIO ALVARADO-TOBAR; SOUND DESIGNER FERNANDO PACHECO; PROPS MASTER BOUKET FINGERHUT; COSTUME DESIGNER MICHAEL MULLEN; STAGE MANAGER ABIGAIL POULOS; INTIMACY COORDINATOR GERILYN BRAULT; ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER IZAIAH MARTINEZ; TREE DESIGNER DAVID FRENCH
CAST: ADAM FRIED; BRYCE HAMILTON; KYLE CALDWELL; CARTER MICHAEL; SEAN PATRICK MURTAGH; ROBERT W. LAUR; JEREMY ETHAN HARRIS; SOPHIA ROTH; THOMAS PATRICK RILEY; PAUL SEAN WARD; KAREN MACARAH; KIERA MORRIS; JABRIEL SHELTON; MEGAN RODDY; JOELLE TSHUDY; JULIA MAGUIRE; CHLOE RENEE GILLOTT; DAVID CALLANDER; JOSHUA LUPER
PARADE plays October 23rd through November 2nd. Thursdays at 7:30 PM. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM. Sundays at 3:00 PM. $20 Tickets. 2 hours, 30 min. For tickets see https://www.electriclodge.org/
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report
Photo Credits: Courtesy The Electric Lodge
