This musical was on my wife’s list of ones she wanted to see, so when the touring production came to Los Angeles, we decided to go see it.
Also a reason was that Brian Vaughn, a longtime favorite at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, has a role. A highlight from the past is his role-swapping turn in The Odd Couple.
Parade is a dramatization of a true story, and really highlights the fact that history is often messy and complicated, and sometimes there is really no such thing as justice.
In 1913, a horrific crime was committed. Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, a child laborer, was found raped and murdered in the basement of the pencil factory she worked at.
That much is undisputed. What was less clear was who committed the crime. Because the case garnered media attention - some really yellow journalism, with xenophobia and scapegoating - there was a lot of pressure to gain a conviction, preferably one that matched the community’s existing prejudices.
The primary suspects were a pair of African American workers - the night watchman who found the body, and the janitor - and the Jewish Yankee Leo Frank, the superintendent.
In the play version, the decision to go after Frank was made because public anger required more than just “hanging another n------r.” It is less clear if this was the case in real life, but in any case, once the decision to pin the blame on Frank, the usual Southern machinery of bribing witnesses to lie went on overdrive.
Frank was convicted, but there was sufficient doubt about his actual guilt that the governor, John Slaton, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. This ended Slaton’s political career, and led him to flee Georgia for a decade because of the death threats. More about him later.
Soon thereafter, Frank was kidnapped by a lynch mob and hanged when he refused to confess to the murder. Even though the lynchers were well known citizens, they were never prosecuted.
The aftermath of this was definitely interesting. The negative publicity ended up leading to a decrease in lynchings. American Jews formed the Anti-Defamation League to combat the virulent antisemitism in society at large but specifically in the media.
Unfortunately, the backlash also contributed to a revitalized Ku Klux Klan, which was both anti-black and anti-Jewish.
In 1986, the state issued Frank a pardon based on the failures of the state, both in a corrupt prosecution, and in failing to protect him from lynching. More recently, the state reopened the investigation. That effort is still pending.
There are so many issues in the case, it is difficult to untangle them all, let alone come to a definitive conclusion as to guilt or innocence.
To start with, everyone connected to the crime was in some way a victim of systemic injustice.
Mary Phagan was forced into long hours of labor starting at age 10 because of the untimely death of her father. Faced with brutal impoverishment, many children like her sacrificed their well-being, health, and even lives to feed the capitalist machine. Her rape and murder wasn’t even all that unusual. Factory children died all the time. And men felt free to harass, assault, and rape low income girls. This was even worse for African American girls, of course, but white skin wasn’t that much of a protection from sexual violence.
The two black men who might have been guilty of the crime were likewise largely unprotected from societal violence. Had Frank not been targeted, one or both of the black men would have been, and they too likely would have been faced with trumped up evidence, and perhaps lynched. Whether or not one of them was guilty (historians seem to lean toward the janitor, Conley, as the actual perpetrator - and he was the “star witness” against Frank.)
The one thing that is certain is that the evidence was shaky, circumstantial, and likely manufactured. But could anyone have gotten a fair trial? Probably not.
Leo Frank too was in a precarious social position. Jews were widely hated and slandered at the time, particularly in the South. Even in the 1930s, as European Jews tried to flee Hitler, the United States closed its doors to them, leading to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
Frank was also a Yankee - not a Southerner. He had married a Southern wife, and been offered his job by one of her relatives, but he was still not “one of us” to the Southerners.
Just as the suspects and the victim were largely unprotected by society, making the case more complicated than a simple “who did it?” there are no clear heroes in this case either.
The closest, perhaps, would be defense attorney Luther Rosser (played by Brian Vaughn in this production) and his assistants, who, by any measure, put up a spirited defense.
But there was a problem there as well, not specifically involving the trial, but its aftermath. It turned out that Governor Slaton was in partnership with Rosser, thus creating a potential conflict of interest. It is a tough case, because there really wasn’t anyone else who could commute the sentence, yet Slaton gave an appearance of bias.
And then there is the media, which doesn’t come off too well in this case. While some papers at least made a cursory attempt at objectivity, the overall coverage fanned the flames of antisemitism and made a fair trial all but impossible.
Just an ugly look for an ugly period of our history.
And, naturally, one that the Trump Regime wishes to erase. There are several people in his regime that are still furious that Frank’s sentence was commuted, and want the pardon rescinded. The neo-Nazis have come out to protest Parade, although we didn’t see any at our performance. They are probably scared shitless that Los Angeles residents would beat their yellow asses.
Speaking of which, an interesting experience is watching any play with political content in my home city. LA is not down with the MAGA movement. Most of us Californians love our diversity, we consider immigrants our neighbors, and actually known plenty of undocumented immigrants that we want to see get legal status, not brutalization by ICE.
I remember back during the first Trump term seeing Hamilton, and hearing the line, “Immigrants - we get it done!” and the entire theater erupting in cheers, pretty much blowing the roof off.
There was a corresponding moment in this play. Mary’s mother gets her aria, testifying at trial, but unfortunately channels her legitimate grief into an antisemitic screed. After she finished….dead silence. And I mean, literally nothing. No clapping. No sound. Even though it was just a play, and the actor portraying the mother is probably a thoroughly decent person, there was nothing. The LA audience wasn’t going to dignify racist shit with any acknowledgement.
Damn.
I don’t think most Republicans understand how deeply Trump is hated here. And one in eight Americans are Californians. Does he really think he is going to conquer us like some sort of vassal state? More and more of us, even in redder counties, are realizing that MAGA has declared war on us, the fourth largest economy in the world, and the heart of American innovation for the last century. So stupid.
Another note about the musical is this: while the historical events are the basis for most of the plot, there is a certain emphasis on the relationship between Frank and his wife Lucille.
At the beginning, Leo is dismissive of Lucille, disregarding her advice, keeping information from her, a mere woman.
As time goes on, however, it is her efforts which finally result in the commutation. In a bit of artistic license, Lucille directly meets the governor and accuses him of being a coward and a fool.
I couldn’t find any evidence that this happened. However, the Judge in the case wrote the governor recommending the commutation, as he felt it was a wrongful conviction. (Really, the lawyers are about the only good guys in this story. But not the crooked prosecutors…)
By the end of the story, Leo and Lucille have come to appreciate each other, and part on terms of love. So that’s kind of a feel-good part of an otherwise really dark story.
I won’t say too much about the production itself. As one would expect from a professional production, the acting, singing, dancing, lighting, sound, and so on, were all polished and excellent.
Max Chernin as Leo Frank was particularly memorable, between his smooth baritone voice and his haunted look throughout.
Ramone Nelson brought down the house with his physical and bluesy performance in “Feel the Rain Fall.”
Talia Suskauer was delightful as Lucille Frank.
And, of course, because of my history seeing him, I loved Brian Vaughn’s turn as the good guy of the story, Luther Rosser.
The staging was fascinating, with a central raised portion that doubled for everything from the courtroom to the prison, and a lot in between. In the wings were various chairs and benches. Very little moved throughout.
In another interesting touch, Leo Frank is in jail at the end of the first act, and remains there on stage throughout intermission.
My wife commented on the creative use of projected backgrounds. This included a lot of historical photographs, including the locations used during the play, pictures of the various real life characters, copies of the newspapers covering the crime and trial, and pictures taken at the lynching.
Behind the screen was the orchestra, which consisted of keys, percussion, and strings. For a sparse group, the music was surprisingly varied, including jazz and blues.
In fact, I really should talk a bit about the music, which I found fascinating. I sometimes struggled to follow the story and the lyrics because I was paying so much attention to the musical element of storytelling.
Alfred Uhry wrote the book and the lyrics. Best known for Driving Miss Daisy, he originally intended Parade to be a play, but was eventually convinced to make it a musical. He has a personal connection to the story, as his great uncle owned the pencil factory that Frank worked at.
Uhry first asked Stephen Sondhiem to write the music, but Sondhiem turned him down. The director Harold Prince suggested Jason Robert Brown after Prince’s daughter mentioned him as a young friend who had some potential. Brown would go on to win a Tony for the score.
My previous experience of Brown’s music was in a local production of The Last Five Years, which was a bit of a stretch for an amateur company, not least because of the brutally difficult music.
Parade is every bit as hard. And even, in a few cases, likely more challenging.
Where to start? I’ll go with the fact that, like many classical opera composers, Brown does as much to tell the story through the music as through the lyrics.
The music, while only occasionally quoting actual songs of the era, very much is in the style of its setting. From gospel to blues to jazz to pop, it sounds much like the 1910s.
But it is more complicated than that too. Brown uses a technique that originated with Charles Ives: at times, the cast is singing two different songs in very different keys. This is particularly noticeable when there are competing factions. The angry white people sing one song, while the black servants sing another, while the Jewish people sing a third. Likewise for prosecution and defense.
This can get quite dissonant. And in fact, throughout, many songs build to a dissonance and then end unresolved. Which parallels the story.
Another way the story is told in music is that the numbers when Leo and Lucille sing together change dramatically. At first, the music clashes, and ends in dissonance. But by the final duet, the music has become harmonious, consonant, and resolves with peace and love.
As with the other Brown musical I have heard, a lot of the exposition of the plot happens through music as well. Thus, paying attention to the lyrics is crucial. Fortunately, the Ahmanson has great acoustics, and the sound mixing was well done.
I do want to mention two of the songs that I particularly liked. I already mentioned “Feel the Rain Fall,” which is such a blues tour-de-force that it really brought the house down. Here is a bit from the production earlier on the tour.
Also excellent - and razor sharp satire - is “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’” - sung by the servants of the Franks. I mean, yeah, the Yankees come around once a Jewish guy gets lynched in a way that they didn’t care as black Americans were lynched by the dozens. It also captures the ongoing reverberations from racial politics between the two marginalized groups dating back before the Civil War.
As I keep saying about the whole story: “It’s complicated and totally fucked up.”
This is, of course, the reason that MAGA doesn’t want accurate history taught. Because ultimately, as a perceptive Southerner once said, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” We are still dealing with the same issues today.
I did enjoy Parade, although “enjoy” might be the wrong word. As a feat of storytelling through word, song, music, and acting, it is outstanding. And the performance was excellent. But yeah, it’s a tough story to tell.
But it is one we need to tell. And a story that can and should influence our own approach to issues of legal justice, social justice, and propaganda.
