A Review of the Masquerade Theatre Production of Parade, the Broadway Musical

The Masquerade Theater brought Houston, Texas an encore production of Parade at its new home at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, from February 23, 2007 to March 3, 2007. They billed the show as "The most important Broadway show you've never seen."

If one just read about the show, Parade would come off as a most improbable candidate for the critical acclaim it received during its brief run on Broadway. In 1999, Parade won the New York Drama Critics Award as best musical. In the same year, the show also won the Tony Awards for best score and for best book, by Alfred Uhry. The show received these kudos even though it is built on the very obscure story of Leo Frank, who was wrongly accused, tried and convicted for the murder of a girl, Mary Phagan, who worked at the plant. Additionally, this was the first major outing as a Broadway composer for Jason Robert Brown,
who had shown great promise in his earlier revue, Songs for a New World. The notable Harold Prince, who co-conceived and directed Parade, must have had the prophetic sense that Mr. Brown brought something special to the task. Apparently he was on the money.

Everett Evans, of the Houston Chronicle, in his review, beautifully summarized the story told in the play.

Set in Atlanta in 1913, Parade introduces Frank as a transplanted Brooklyn Jew, working as superintendent at a pencil factory, ill at ease among Southerners. When a 13-year old factory girl is found raped and murdered, Frank's outsider status makes him a convenient scapegoat. Opportunist politicians [and an opportunistic reporter as well] stoke the flames of anti-Semitism and lingering resentment toward Yankees 50 years after the Civil War. Frank finds himself railroaded into a murder conviction built on false testimony. [Picture to the right: Leo and Lucille Frank]

The play also tells a second, very poignant story, that parallels the events of the trial. Leo Frank and his wife, Lucille enjoyed a polite but very strained relationship. As was the custom of the times in Jewish families, theirs was an arranged marriage. He was a more traditional, Northern Jew. She was a very assimilated Southern Jew, who fit easily into the setting of Atlanta as much as much as Leo did not. As the play progressed, she became his most ardent supporter, championing his cause. In the course of the trial and its aftermath, she grew into a strong woman, whose dedicated efforts eventually resulted in Governor John Slaton commuting Leo's sentence from death by hanging to life in prison. In the course of their collective ordeal, Leo and Lucille came to know and to love each other and find the closeness they had never enjoyed before that. Theirs is a haunting story, which ended tragically. On August 16, 1915, a "lynch mob" of some local officials seized Leo Frank from his cell at the prison at which he was incarcerated and the next morning, hung him on outskirts of Marietta, Ga. Leo Frank was buried in Brooklyn, N.Y. on August 20th, three days later.

If I attend a performance of a Broadway musical, I find that I can still have an enjoyable experience even if the cast is not up to par or if the stagecraft leaves something to be desired. However, if the book for play, or the music or lyrics for the songs are lacking in a significant way, I come away with the sense that I had had a less than thrilling experience. Without these elements, the evening will be a bust.

Like a lot of the other folks who attended this show, I came knowing very little about the show, the music, the lyrics or the relative merits of the play itself. As a practice, I ignore the reviews and never listen to the cast album before I see the show for the first time. All I knew was that the subject matter was the trial of Leo Frank. That's it.

But I have to say that this show was an unexpected surprise. I did not expect it to be such a good play... such a powerfully written play... such an intensive play. I did not expect that it would engage me so completely from beginning to end. Except for a single scene at the beginning of the second act, I never felt the show was slow or off the mark. One scene flowed seamlessly into the next. I was drawn into the world of Atlanta in 1913 and 1914 and I could almost feel like I was there, appalled at what I was witnessing and yet, unable to alter the inexorable outcome. Alfred Uhry, the author, is no stranger to Broadway and he brought his considerable experience and talent to writing this amazing show.

When I read in the playbill that Jason Robert Brown was the composer and lyricist, it did not immediately ring a bell. In seeing the show, I could discern that this fellow possessed uncommon talent. The music was alternatively raucous, poignant, lightly delightful, soaringly dramatic, introspective and wonderfully inventive. The lyrics were equally inventive and served to vividly create the characters for us and to build in our minds the overwhelmingly poisonous environment of Atlanta at the time, the context in which this trial and the aftermath took place.
Helping to flesh out the characters, to set the tone and context of the play itself and to move the action of the play forward in a dramatic way... these are the usual things that I expect the songs in any musical drama to do. And Mr. Brown created music and lyrics that did just that, nimbly and inventively.

A song which amply illustrates his inventiveness is the sequence, Come Up to My Office, in which Leo Frank is dramatically presented as the people in the crowd perceive him. The song transformed him into the absolute antithesis of the quiet, private man he actually was. The despicable villain that the folks of Atlanta were seeing came to life on the stage, and for a moment I was able to see the defendant through the eyes of Leo Frank's accusers. As a member of the audience, I found the moment to be both sobering and fascinating. That sequence in the show served as a painful reminder of what human beings are capable of perceiving and doing when they yield to the destructive impulses of prejudice, bigotry and hatred. Mr. Brown elicited these feeling and perceptions in me, with his wonderfully crafted music and words.

Mary Phagan, around whose murder the entire story revolves, appears only briefly during the entire show. Yet through the song, The Picture Show, early in the show, we come to know her extremely well, even though we come to know her from only a single moment in her life. This is the only song this character has to establish who she was: a spirited, sassy, attractive young girl, who drove a particular young fellow, Frankie Epps, girl crazy. It is a delightful song and provides one of the few light moments of the show.

The crowd scenes on the street and in the courtroom provide another example of how the music and lyrics painted in notes and words the growing anger and frenzy to find someone to punish for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan. With each successive scene, the songs and the lyrics became increasingly dramatic and intense. The music and lyrics capture the surging mob mentality that was mounting to such a fever that the outcome of the trial could have been predicted before it even began.

A reporter down on his luck, Britt Craig, needs to turn his career around. We first meet Mr. Craig when he sings Big News!. In a blues/New Orleans Jazz style number. he energetically paints a picture of Atlanta as a backwater town, where nothing of any consequence ever happens. He sees this trial is a gift and an opportunity make a comeback. In another musical number, his is captured sensationalizing the trial. He proceeds to impugn and misrepresent the character of Leo Frank with unverified allegations. Everything that he sets out to write pours more oil on the anger of the crowd and he poison any possibility that Frank could receive a fair trial. Jason Brown's cynical lyrics make it very clear he is doing this with clear premeditation and an absolute lack of conscience. Other characters from the press, in the play, equally abandon journalistic integrity and milk the trial for all it is worth.

Hugh Dorsey, the solicitor for the state of Georgia in Atlanta, made the decision to get Frank convicted, even though he could not directly connect Frank to the crime. He played to the anger in the streets and he subverted justice in every way, to further his political career and to play to to the local prejudices against Frank, the Jew, Frank, the college educated man and Frank, the transplanted Northerner. His character sings no signature songs or lyrics. But he reveals much about himself in the songs. He is cut from the single piece of cloth which is woven from huge ambition to be achieved at any cost, from a poisonous hatred of Jews, and from an utter disregard for the real word and spirit of the law.

There is a musical and lyrical counterpoint to the mob frenzy. Leo Frank is hopelessly out of place in what he describes as "a place that time forgot." In his opening song, he move totally alone among the crowd of people waiting to see the annual Confederate Day Parade. Everyone else in the crowd is caught up in the moment. In the song, How Can I Call This Home, he bares his soul. He is alone among people he doesn't understand and he wishes only to go home to Brooklyn. He is afraid to connect to these people and in self-defense, buries himself in his work. He even has trouble connecting in any real way with his wife, Lucille. He is different from "them," ... from the people of Atlanta and even from the Jews of the South. He feels different from them. He is seen by the people of Atlanta as the ultimate outsider. But the ordeal transforms him into a human being who can begin to love and be loved... into a person who is not afraid to open himself up and to adapt when the occasion demands him to do so... into a nominally functional human being, which is something he was not, before his nightmarish ordeal. The songs that Mr. Brown creates for Leo Frank chronicle his painful transformation in a quiet counterpoint to the madness which surrounds him.

Lucille Frank also experiences transformation. In her song, What Am I Waiting For?, she reveals that she and Leo enjoy a loveless relationship, living at arms length from one another. Later, as she works behind the scenes to secure Leo's release, she confronts Leo, in Do It Alone. She finally finds the strength to let him know that she feels as alone in their relationship as he does. Fine, she says. If you want to deal with the case against him, all by himself, so be it! And she leave him at the jail. But she becomes a gutsy and strong woman, who courageously continues to champion his cause and late in the second act, the two of them celebrate finally falling in love with each other and lamenting all the time they lost, in the song, All the Wasted Time. It is a lovely and wonderfully poignant duet. Of course, I already knew how their story ended, and I was enormously saddened by the ironically bittersweet character of the moment.

I especially remember one additional moment in this play. Near the end of the play, I had to witness Leo Frank being lynched and murdered. I found that to be a gut-wrenching experience, even though I knew these were only actors on a stage and that no one had actually died. What I also knew was that this lynching did happen nearly 100 years ago. I was just seeing an instant replay of the actual event. It didn't make it any easier for me to witness.

The show ended with the people of Atlanta, a year later, waiting for the Confederate Day Parade to begin. They sang their anthem to the "noble" spirit of Georgia in the finale... the same spirit and mindset that saw the trial of Leo Frank as fair and just. As people, they had not changed. They still hated Northerners and anyone who was educated. The still hated Jews... and blacks. They were still capable of carrying out yet one more miscarriage of justice if they were called upon to do so. I found an overwhelming irony in that song and that sentiment.

When the curtain fell, I could not speak a word. I was emotionally distraught by the events chronicled and the people that Parade portrayed. I tried to find a quiet spot just beyond the main lobby to collect myself. I went into the show utterly unprepared for the emotional intensity of this show. I am not alone in the way I responded to this play. In another review of the play that I found online, the reviewer reported experiencing the same level of emotional distress at having seen another production of this show. For me, this is a true measure of how successful the book, the music and the lyrics of Parade were.

Later, after I had collected myself, I spoke with Kristina Sullivan, who ably played the role of Lucille. She asked me if I liked the show. Before I could answer, she added that this was not exactly a show one would "like." But it is a show which is riveting. Once I was drawn into the story, there was no way I would have been able to will myself into leaving. It was not exactly a matter of enjoying the production. Rather, it was fascination to see how the events depicted were going to play themselves out. Awful and hypnotic, both at the same time.

As to the production itself, once again The Masquerade Theatre has brought the highest values of theatrical endeavor to this show. At minimum, it would have been a daunting endeavor for any theater troupe, director or choreographer. However, The Masquerade Theatre seems to be a group which thrives on such challenges, having brought to Houston productions of Sweeney Todd, Jane Eyre and Jekyll and Hyde. These are not shows to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

The sets were spare and minimal and as The Masquerade Theatre has done in the past, the staging was used to great effect. There were three skeletal structures on stage, one stage right, one stage center and one stage right. The first served as the residence of Leo Frank. the upper level of the center one served as the office of the very zealous district attorney. The structure on the right was alternately Leo Frank's office and a flexibly used space during the rest of the show. Toward the front of the stage on the left stood a riser. The stage was first a street in Atlanta, then a courtroom where the injustice was carried out and later a jail/prison. The total stage was Atlanta of 1913 and the illusion of the city worked wonderfully well with the smoothly conceived blocking of the actors in the course of the show.

Only one scene in the entire show did the blocking and the action seem to be disrupted. In the second act, the scene in which several characters sang "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'", the song presents the attitudes of the African Americans of that Atlanta. The scene really seemed extraneous and to serve no useful purpose in the show. It may have been something of an afterthought on the part of Mr. Uhry and Mr. Brown when they were putting the show together. The show would not have suffered greatly if the number had been cut from this production.

It goes without saying that the final result of the directing, the lighting, the blocking of the action, the sets and the interpretation of this play worked, resulting in a the poignant telling of a very stirring story.

In the end, however, it fell upon this versatile and talented group of actors and actresses to make this production of Parade a certifiable success. As an ensemble, they brought their talent and their experience, their dedication and commitment,... their very bodies, minds and souls to create the players, large and small, in this American tragedy, so that those characters could come alive upon the Zilkha Stage for a brief hour or so.

Luther Chakurian and
Kristina Sullivan

Among the cast members, Luther Chakurian, as Leo Frank; Kristina Sullivan, as Lucille Frank; and Evan Tessier, as Britt Craig, the reporter, stand out as truly memorable in their performances. The characters, Leo and Lucille Frank, certainly presented a large challenge to Mr. Chakurian and Ms. Sullivan. Both of these actors have proven themselves to be notably capable of filling the stage with their presence in the previous productions from Masquerade Theatre this season. The character that each of these actor played in Parade lived inward, introspective lives. Mr. Chakurian and Ms. Sullivan were limited in the range of body language they could employ to build their characters. But somehow each was able to help us see the changes in Lucille and Leo, in the subtle nuances of voice, manner of movement and in his or her interpretation of the pivotal songs which signaled those changes. The Leo Frank and Lucille Frank of Parade evolve as people who are emotionally isolated even from each other to nominally functional human beings who finally find their love for each other.

In the production number, "Come Up to My Office," We watch Mr. Chakurian morph from the Leo Frank of reality into the the demon depicted in the press of the time and back into the insecure, introverted man that he was. Mr. Chakurian's performance in that sequence is amazing... it was a seamless transformation into the imagined predator and back again, and he was equally believable in both personae. That he was able to do this with such apparent ease is a true measure of his skills and abilities as an actor.

The diminutive Ms. Sullivan is a certifiable wonder on the stage. She is made up of some organic stuff that enables her to transform herself into anything she chooses to become. Here she is as Lucille Frank, a fragile person and a very human person whom we can fully imagine as Ms. Sullivan portrays her. Ms. Sullivan becomes a woman for whom we can feel a heartbreaking empathy. She won this audience over in this show, becoming a woman who, from an unhappy and fragile individual, transformed herself into a strong gutsy woman taking on the powers that were and a warm, loving and supportive wife to her husband.

Evan Tessier, on the other hand, played a character who if anything was really over the top. He was either pretty drunk on liquor or inebriated on the opportunity to once again be in the spotlight as the reporter covering the biggest story in Atlanta in recent history. I asked Mr. Tessier if the actual Britt Craig actually felt badly about the role he played in the conviction of Leo Frank. He said that in the research he had done, he found that was really true. In my research on the subject, Britt Craig actually took the side of Leo Frank as the trial was nearing its end. This actor had a lot to play with and could use broad body language to build his character and a very large voice to flesh in his personna. Mr. Tessier created a wonderfully animated fellow whom we did not want to like, but who was not at all an unlikable fellow. Just something of a desperate opportunist who was grasping at the chance to rebuild his declining journalistic career.

Kacy Smith, as Mary Phagan, deserves special mention. The death of her character set this very real American judicial tragedy into motion. Ms. Smith is only on stage for maybe five or ten minutes at most, during the entire show. But in that brief span of time she is able to create the existence of a very real young woman, full of spunk and spirit, who died much too early in her life. Her delightful interaction with Dominic Di Felice, as Frankie Epps, was one of the few moments of the play where the mood was light and happy. Ms. Smith gave us a Mary Phagan full of fun and full of life. When she appears later in the courtroom scene, we are presented with a Mary Phagan transformed and supposedly damaged, as she existed in the minds of the jury and the people of Atlanta. This actress met the challenge of creating her character ably and well.

When all is said and done, this was a certifiably good production. All the elements of the show worked well with each other. The stagecraft, the effective use of lighting effects, reasonably decent choreography, a stellar cast and a wonderfully conceived combination of music and book... together, all these melded into a show which stirred one's soul and which left one emotionally devastated when the curtain fell. Job well done.