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HOW ARE THINGS in Glocca Morra?” is a song from the 1947 musical “Finian’s Rainbow,” which is about, among other things, a leprechaun. Glocca Morra doesn’t exist, and if it did, it wouldn’t be in, say, Poland. The song is sung by a homesick Irish lass in the American South; like the show overall, it […] More
Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond star in a timely and gorgeously sung Broadway revival of the 1998 musical about the Leo Frank case.You do not expect the star of a musical about a man lynched by an antisemitic mob to be his wife. Especially when that man, Leo Frank, who was murdered in Georgia in 1915, is played, with his usual intensity and vocal drama, by Ben Platt.Yet in the riveting Broadway revival of the musical “Parade” that opened on Thursday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, it’s Micaela Diamond, as Lucille Frank, you watch most closely and who breaks your heart. With no affectation whatsoever, and a voice directly wired to her emotions, she makes Lucille our way into a story we might rather turn away from.True, this alters the balance of the show as originally staged by Harold Prince in 1998, further tipping it toward the marriage instead of the miscarriage of justice. Also toward the rapturous score by Jason Robert Brown, which won a Tony Award in 1999. But since the legal procedural was never the best part or even the point of “Parade,” the enhanced emphasis on a love story tested by tragedy and set to song is a big net gain.It’s strange, of course, to talk about net gains in relation to such a horrible tale. But “Parade” has always been strange anyway, seeking to make commercial entertainment out of a violent history and, because he’s a victim, a hero of a nebbish.As Alfred Uhry’s book — also a Tony winner — relates, Leo, the manager of a pencil factory owned by Lucille’s uncle, is a misfit in Atlanta: a New York Jew but also a cold fish. In Platt’s highly physical interpretation, he is scrunched and sickly looking, as if literally oppressed by the gentile society around him. That Lucille’s family, longtime Southerners, seems warmly assimilated into that society makes their marriage, at the start, a curdling of cream and vinegar.Michael Arden’s staging, imported with a slightly different cast from the City Center gala he directed in November, rightly relishes such contrasts. He signals the primacy of the love story by starting, in the 1860s, with sex: a young Confederate soldier bidding goodbye to his girl. A foreboding Dixie anthem called “The Old Red Hills of Home” leaps 50 years forward to connect the white Christian bigotry that fueled the Civil War to the war against Leo as well.His troubles begin with the murder of Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle), a 13-year-old white employee who works, for 10 cents an hour, fastening erasers to pencil caps. Lacking conclusive evidence and in dire need of a conviction, the district attorney, Hugh Dorsey (Paul Alexander Nolan), railroads Leo by suborning testimony from many sources: friends of Phagan, a cleaner at the factory (Alex Joseph Grayson) and even Minnie, the Franks’s maid (Danielle Lee Greaves). After a sensational trial that cynically pits Jewish Atlantans against Black ones, Leo is sentenced to hang.The minimal set by Dane Laffrey is essentially a high platform on a low one, suggesting a witness box, a cell and a scaffold, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen the first act ends on that awful note, we still do not know Leo well. His first song, usually in musicals a moment for ingratiation, is instead a bitter snit called “How Can I Call This Home?” His last before the verdict is “It’s Hard to Speak My Heart.” Whatever that heart really holds is further blurred by Uhry’s device of having Leo enact the false testimony of other characters, so we see him as a rake and a maniac before we’ve grasped him as a man.Arden begins to correct for that during the intermission, which Leo, now imprisoned, spends sitting onstage with his head in his hands. In Act II, as he recognizes his growing dependence on Lucille, she finally becomes real to him and thus he to us.It’s too bad that some of this enlightenment is achieved through huge elisions and license in relating what is still a contested history. Though it’s true that Georgia’s governor (Sean Allan Krill) opened an inquiry that led to the commutation of Leo’s death sentence — but only to life in prison — it’s doubtful he did so as a result of Lucille’s buttonholing him at a tea dance. Nor that she accompanied him like a lay detective as he reinterviewed witnesses and obtained their recantations.Even if true, it’s unconvincing here, presented almost as a series of Nancy Drew skits. Still, Diamond maintains her dignity, allowing the final phase of the tragedy — in which Leo, after two years of appeals that are summarized in one line, is kidnapped from his cell and hanged — to commence with the drama righted.It is never wronged as long as Brown’s music plays. In this, his first Broadway show, he demonstrates the astonishing knack for dirty pastiche that has informed such follow-ups as “The Last Five Years,” “13” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” “Pastiche” because of his inerrant ear for just the right genre to fit any situation, in this case including Sousa-style marches, work songs, blues, swing ditties for the factory girls, a dainty waltz for the governor’s party. “Dirty” because he roughs them up with post-Sondheim technique, scraping the surface to bring up the blood.Douglas Lyons and Courtnee Carter sing the mordant “A Rumblin’ and A Rollin’” as hysteria about the case grows.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd as one of the few musical theater composers to write his own lyrics successfully, he gives singing actors something to act. He also manages to achieve in a rhyme what would otherwise take a scene of dialogue. As the politicians and journalists foment local hysteria and national media interest in the case, he gives two Black workers in the governor’s mansion a mordant triplet in the song “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’”: “I can tell you this as a matter of fact/that the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed/if a little Black girl had been attacked.”That the Black workers (Douglas Lyons and Courtnee Carter) are otherwise barely characterized is one of the more obvious signs that the show’s book was written in the 20th century. (Uhry has made some revisions for this production.) Arden addresses this by keeping the ensemble as particular as possible, never letting it devolve into vague masses making generic gestures. And in minimizing the visual elements — the set (by Dane Laffrey) is essentially a high platform on a low one, suggesting a witness box, a cell and a scaffold — he keeps our attention on the people and what they sing.If actual history plays second fiddle to that — by the way, there’s a terrific orchestra of 17 players, just two shy of the plush original — current history steps in as a pretty good substitute. Not just in the guise of revitalized antisemitism, though the show’s first preview, on Feb. 21, was greeted by a small gaggle of neo-Nazi demonstrators.What struck me even more vividly in this well-judged and timely revival is the quick path hysteria has always burned through the American spirit if fanned by media, politicians and prejudice of any kind. When a chorus of white Georgians chants “hang ’im, hang ’im, make him pay,” the words can’t help but echo uncomfortably in the post-Jan. 6 air. And another song, a prayer for a return of the day when “the Southland was free,” sounds a lot like current talk of a second secession.Our historical wounds never really heal over. Though Frank’s death sentence was commuted, he was killed anyway and, as “Parade” points out, never exonerated. That case is ongoing.ParadeThrough Aug. 6 at the Jacobs Theater, Manhattan; paradebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More
The actor, who learned to love music at her local temple, has developed a different relationship to her Judaism onstage.Micaela Diamond once thought she might make a good cantor. The 23-year-old actor loved singing with the congregation at the conservative synagogue she attended as a child in Margate, N.J., just outside Atlantic City. Much has changed since then, notably that you can now hear Diamond’s powerful soprano on Broadway stages. But she’s still, in a way, performing Jewish music: the songs of Jason Robert Brown’s “Parade,” the Broadway revival of which opens March 16.The musical, which first premiered in 1998 with a book by Alfred Uhry, is based on the life of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jew who in 1915, while imprisoned after the murder of a young girl he employed at a factory, was pulled from jail by a mob and lynched. Diamond was first cast for the revival’s brief run at New York City Center last fall; she stars opposite Ben Platt as Frank’s wife and fiercest advocate, Lucille.It’s an intense role vocally, with forceful numbers like “You Don’t Know This Man” and “Do It Alone,” sung by Carolee Carmello in the original Broadway production before Diamond was even born. But another difficulty is handling the emotional exhaustion that stems from the themes of violence and antisemitism coursing throughout the piece. “Being able to tell this story to other Jews, to non-Jews, to start nuanced discussions … about what it means to be a Jew and how hatred is inherited is what I want my life’s work to be,” Diamond says. “So much of my identity lives in this show.”Diamond grew up steeped in Margate’s large Jewish community, but stopped attending services when she moved to New York City with her mother while in middle school. She later found other ways to explore her religion, like joining fellow classmates in the Jewish community club at Manhattan’s LaGuardia High School, one of the country’s most prominent public training grounds for artists. “I just started asking more questions, which, in the end, is a very Jewish thing to do,” Diamond says. “I think my Judaism is Sarah Silverman and a bagel with schmear.”Diamond had planned to join the musical theater program at Carnegie Mellon University when she got her final callback (while jet-lagged after a Birthright trip to Israel, no less) for her first Broadway production, “The Cher Show,” in which she played a young version of the singer in 2018. That nearly yearlong run was an educational experience of its own — particularly, Diamond says, in learning how to take care of herself while doing eight shows a week. (“Like, does a leading lady have to go to Equinox … every single day?”)For “Parade,” perhaps unsurprisingly, Diamond is prioritizing “more care for my heart than my body” — in part by gathering with other Jewish cast members to pray together backstage before each performance. “It just feels like honoring Leo and Lucille and remembering how lucky we are to be Jews telling this story,” she says. “It does feel like this kind of centering, and a way to connect to them, before we go through some Jewish trauma onstage.”Ahead of opening night, T asked Diamond to sing and discuss one of her favorite songs, Joni Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree” (1968), above. More
The musical’s exploration of antisemitism is timely, with rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond.Ben Platt, the Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” will return to Broadway next month to lead the cast in a revival of “Parade,” a musical about an early-20th-century lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia.The revival, directed by Michael Arden (a two-time Tony nominee, for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening”), had a seven-performance run at New York City Center last fall. Platt plays Leo Frank, a factory boss convicted of killing a young girl in a case tainted by antisemitism; Micaela Diamond, who previously played the youngest version of the title character in “The Cher Show” on Broadway, will co-star as Frank’s wife, Lucille.The show, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry and co-conceived by Hal Prince, had a brief run on Broadway that opened in 1998; it was commercially unsuccessful, but won Tony Awards for both book and score. The history it depicts is real: Frank was convicted in 1913, lynched in 1915 (at age 31), and in 1986 he was posthumously pardoned.The musical’s exploration of antisemitism has made it more timely now, when there is rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond. The City Center production garnered uniformly strong reviews: in The New York Times, Juan A. Ramírez called it “the best-sung musical in many a New York season.”The “Parade” revival will begin previews Feb. 21 and open March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, where the musical “Almost Famous” closed on Sunday. The “Parade” production is planning a short run, to Aug. 6.The revival is being produced by Seaview, a company created by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea that previously produced “Slave Play” and “POTUS,” and Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company that operates two Broadway houses (the Hudson and the Lyric) and also produces shows. More
City Center’s gala production delves further into America’s history of violence and delivers the best-sung musical in many a New York season.Just six months after its universally beloved Encores! revival of “Into the Woods,” New York City Center returns with another timely, excellent production about collective responsibility and loss. Smartly directed by Michael Arden, City Center’s gala presentation of “Parade,” which opened on Tuesday night and runs through Sunday, delves further into America’s history of violence and delivers the best-sung musical in many a New York season.The book writer Alfred Uhry’s dramatization of the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, and his subsequent imprisonment and 1915 lynching, gave the composer Jason Robert Brown a canvas to paint a complex, nourishing score that captures the entire weight of that fraught history. (Both men won Tonys for their work on the show, which premiered on Broadway in 1998.) Here, a first-rate orchestra, conducted by Brown, and under the music direction of Tom Murray, brings its pomp and pageantry to terrifying life.At the heart of the show is the rich-voiced Ben Platt, successfully transferring his lauded anxious energy from “Dear Evan Hansen” to the role of Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-born Jewish pencil factory manager uneasy in his Atlanta surroundings. His sense of regional superiority is matched by the naïve comfort of his wife, Lucille (a luminous Micaela Diamond), as she plans for a picnic on the day of the town’s annual Confederate Memorial Day parade. Diamond’s expressive face, with large eyes as expressive as those of a silent screen siren, carries the burden of resilience as Leo is wrongly jailed for the murder of a 13-year-old girl who worked at the factory.In an antisemitic kangaroo court under Judge Roan’s (John Dossett) uncaring eye, the prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (a remarkable Paul Alexander Nolan) presents a flimsy case. Adding fuel to the flames are a fundamentalist newspaper publisher (Manoel Felciano) and a sensationalist reporter (the superb Jay Armstrong Johnson, shining as he sings the score’s most fast-paced number, “Real Big News,” made doubly hectic by Cree Grant’s spin-heavy choreography here, which is otherwise lovely).A fully staged “Parade” hasn’t been seen in New York in nearly 25 years, and this revival recalls an era of big casts, big stories and big talent, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDespite Governor Slaton’s (Sean Allan Krill) belated efforts, Leo’s fate is sealed by false testimonies coaxed out of the murdered girl’s co-workers (Ashlyn Maddox, Sophia Manicone, Sofie Poliakoff) and the factory’s janitor Jim Conley (a phenomenally voiced Alex Joseph Grayson). The cast, which also includes Gaten Matarazzo as a teenager out for vengeance, is uniformly splendid — as adept in the work’s solo outings as in the electric group numbers.But the problems with the book, which lacks some dramatic immediacy, remain. Ben Brantley mentioned the “overriding feeling of disdain, a chilly indignation” in his original review; and, as Vincent Canby wrote shortly afterward, the musical “plays as if it were still a collection of notes.” There is no confusing good and evil here; never any question as to what anyone is thinking or about to do, their personalities and fates as predetermined as those of characters in a children’s Bible. The show, in that respect, is aptly titled.Arden wisely counteracts this by filling the production with deft flourishes that compound American hatred across centuries: A salute by Confederate soldiers’ is slowed down so that their outstretched arms resemble a Sieg Heil salute; Roan and Dorsey’s fishing rods in one scene whip down like switches; revelers crack open Bud Lights in their final celebration.Dane Laffrey’s resourceful set — a raised wooden platform flanked, courtroom-style, by simple chairs — effectively evokes a minstrel stage, soapbox and gallows at once. And the stage under the platform is adorned with stars-and-stripes buntings that hang over mounds of crimson earth — as much the hallowed “old red hills” of Georgia as bloodstained dirt thrown onto a coffin — and a small screen emphasizing the show’s procedural nature by displaying each scene’s time, date, and location, which matches historical photographs projected onto the back wall.Then again, considering Uhry and Brown’s text and lyrics, subtlety need not be the name of the game these days. This country’s ongoing procession of racism, antisemitism and “law-and-order”-screeching politicians comes awfully close to the hate-filled climate of the work’s setting, shedding any pretense of respectability. Arden here fights fire with fire, and his direction is sincere and unambiguous. But no one is let off the hook. I imagine the audience members laughing at the condescending jokes about Southern idiocy in the first act had to at least sit with the second act’s taunting of selective liberal compassion, sung with liveliness by Courtnee Carter and Douglas Lyons.A fully staged “Parade” hasn’t been seen in New York in nearly 25 years, and this revival recalls an era of big casts, big stories and big talent — a time when musicals actually felt like events. Platt and Diamond are fearless performers, and their duet “This Is Not Over Yet” is a powerhouse for the ages. Their commanding vocals are matched by a confident production that revives the best of the original while pointing at the possibility of growth, and hope.ParadeThrough Nov. 6 at New York City Center, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More
