Parade - Review

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York

****

Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown

Book by Alfred Uhry

Directed by Michael Arden

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt

It is nearly 25 years since Parade premiered on Broadway, where it was to win two Tonys (out of nine nominations) but yet close after barely three months of performances. Fast forward to 2023 where this first Broadway revival of the show has already garnered 6 Tony nominations and plays to a much changed world than when it first opened in 1998.

Parade was always a bold and brave concept for a musical. It was legendary director Hal Prince who co-conceived the show, turning to Brown when Stephen Sondheim was unavailable. Drawn from the early 20th century history of Georgia USA, Alfred Uhry's book tells of the Jewish Atlantan Leo Frank, wrongly accused and subsequently found guilty, of the murder of Mary Phagan, a young Christian child. Originally from New York, so an outsider as well as a Jew, Frank found himself the focus of extreme antisemitism that was to have a tragic outcome. The genius of Brown’s writing lies not just in his music that draws from a raft of Southern styles and influences, but in his lyrics that not only chart the horrific evolution of the murderous right-wing extremism of the time, but also catches moments of underlying wry American humour, as well as the profound and loving pathos of the relationship between Frank and his wife Lucille.

Having reviewed numerous productions of Parade over recent years, this marks the first mainstream commercial take on the work that www.jonathanbaz.com has covered, and notwithstanding the musical excellence heard in those previous iterations, to hear Brown’s score, played here magnificently by Tom Murray’s 18-piece band, is an absolute treat.

Ben Platt is a magnificent Leo, who defines the man’s transition from an orthodox chauvinist into a loving and appreciative husband in a beautifully nuanced interpretation. Platt’s vocals are also tremendous, never better defined that in that wondrous vocal leap that sees him transformed from the fantastical and vile (albeit imagined) predator in Come Up To My Office to a pleading, vulnerable innocent facing a monstrous world in It’s Hard To Speak My Heart. Platt also nails the wit of How Can I Call This Home?, a number that defines his incredulity, as a “Yankee with a college education”, he tries to get to grips with the redneck South. 

Opposite Platt, Micaela Diamond takes on the equally challenging role of Lucille. There is excellence in much of Diamond’s work, particularly in her duets This Is Not Over Yet and All the Wasted Time, but her solo work, especially in the first act’s You Don’t Know This Man fails to hit the spot.

Other notable vocal contributions come from Alex Joseph Grayson as convicted criminal Jim Conley who smashes his every song out of the park and also from Kelli Barrett as Mrs Phagan, the mother of the murdered child. Barrett captures not only a poignant grief at her terrible loss, but also a palpable Jew-hatred in her remarkable delivery of My Child Will Forgive Me.

Seeing this show for the first time in the USA rather than in the UK, it is pleasing to see Brown’s New York wisecracks that lampoon Southern stereotypes, landing to audience laughter rather than falling flat to a house full of Brits, who struggle to grasp the writer's brilliant irony

The show’s design is simple, with most of the cast on-stage throughout and principle action playing out on a raised central dais in front of projected scenic images. There is however a curious projection that occurs in the pre-show mise-en-scene as the audience are taking their seats. An actual newspaper report of the Leo Frank story, from back in the day, is shown on the screen that graphically tells of Frank’s ultimate fate. This is a curious and patronising decision by the show’s creative team, for while the themes and history of Parade are undoubtedly educational and important, to undermine the musical’s narrative and not only that but in front of New York audiences that are mostly made up of Yankees with a college education, is not fair on the show. It is also, for those in the audience unaware of how the Leo Frank saga plays out and are hopefully looking for the musical to tell them a story, one heck of a spoiler.

If you love Brown’s score you are unlikely to hear it played finer than this.

Runs until 6th August

See below for my programme notes, written to accompany the production of Parade that opened the Hope Mill Theatre in 2016

My Thoughts on Jason Robert Brown's Parade 

Written by Jonathan Baz and published in 2016

Jason Robert Brown’s Tony-winner kicks off during the 1913 Confederate Memorial Day Parade in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil War had been fought (and lost) some 50 years earlier and it is the aftermath of that defeat that powers the context of this show. 

The Southern States had fought the North in a desperate, bloody struggle to hold on to their right to enslave African Americans. Slavery was (and is) de-humanising and barbaric and yet, to a majority of folk in the Confederacy, it was not only acceptable, it was desirable. Southern racism was ingrained and the Confederate flag remains a chilling emblem of the white supremacists.

As that 1913 parade passed by, Mary Phagan a white 13 year old girl from Marietta, just outside Atlanta, was brutally raped and murdered in the city’s pencil factory where she worked. Amid a hue and cry for justice, it didn't take Atlanta’s Police Department long to be conveniently pointed in the wrong direction, accusing Leo Frank, the factory superintendent. Frank may have been white, but he was a Yankee from the North and worse, a Jew. 

Parade explores how Frank was subsequently framed and how he and his wife Lucille, fought back. Child abuse and murder may not be regular subjects for a musical theatre treatment, yet from this dark core, composer Jason Robert Brown has fashioned one of the finest musicals to have emerged in the last 20 years.

Parade succeeds on so many levels. It has a finely crafted score and libretto, it's a history lesson and a towering love story. Brown won a Tony for the score; listen out for the traditional melodies of the South, carefully woven into his work. There’s Gospel, Spiritual, Blues and Swing in there, with the composer saving perhaps one of musical theatre’s finest coups for his Act One Finale. As Parade’s narrative reaches a horrendous turning point, Brown has his citizens of Atlanta launch into an exhilarating cakewalk. Where Kander and Ebb brought Cabaret’s first half to a troubling close with ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, Brown’s cakewalk juxtaposes jubilation with injustice. Rarely has an array of swirling Southern petticoats and frocks been quite so stomach churning.

As a history lesson, Parade is up there with the best. The opening number ‘The Old Red Hills Of Home’ hits the audience with an unforgiving staccato percussion that soon includes a funereal chime alongside discordant strings, before evolving into a chilling yet (whisper it not) discomfortingly stirring anthem. The song is remarkable in that between its opening and closing bars, Brown tells the entire story of the South’s Civil War. A young and handsome Confederate soldier sings the opening lines, who by the song’s end is a gnarled and crippled veteran. Wounded and bitter, the old soldier dreams of the ‘lives that we led when the South land was free’. 

Brown also kicks off the second half with a punch. While Parade is famously about anti-Semitism, ‘A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’ is sung by two of the Governor of Georgia’s African American Domestic Staff, both well aware that while the Frank furore is gripping the nation, their lot hasn't significantly changed, even after the abolition of slavery. Riley, the Governor’s Chauffeur has a line ‘the local hotels wouldn't be so packed, if a little black girl had gotten attacked’ that should prick at America’s collective conscience even today, while his killer lyric a few bars on, ‘there’s a black man swingin’ in every tree, but they don't never pay attention!’ has a devastating simplicity.

Parade also beats to the drum of a passionate love story. Early on we find Leo and Lucille questioning their very different Jewish lifestyles. He’s from Brooklyn, a ‘Yankee with a college education’, while she is a privileged belle about whom Frank observes ‘for the life of me I cannot understand how God created you people Jewish AND Southern!’. There is a cultural gulf between the pair which, upon Leo’s arrest, only widens. How Alfred Uhry’s book and Brown’s lyrics portray the couple’s deepening love, is a literary master stroke. 

While the show was to receive numerous nominations in both Broadway’s 1999 awards season and later in 2008 on its London opening, the Opening at New York's Lincoln Centre disappointed, running for barely 100 performances. Variety magazine called it the ‘ultimate feel-bad musical’ and the crowds stayed away.

It was however, to be at London’s modest Donmar Warehouse, directed by Rob Ashford who had been the show's original Dance Captain on Broadway, that the show was to soar. So much so that Brown took the Donmar production back for a successful run in Los Angeles, with Lara Pulver, the Donmar’s Lucille, still in the lead. Thom Southerland’s fringe production a few years later at London’s Southwark Playhouse received similar plaudits. 

So why was Parade loved in London, yet shunned in New York? Wise theatre heads have suggested that perhaps Americans have little appetite for a musical that focuses upon such an ugly feature of their country’s history.

100 years on, what has been the legacy of the Frank case? For good, it served to spawn the Anti-Defamation League, America’s anti-fascist organisation. However the episode also re-ignited the burning crosses of the Klu Klux Klan. I recently visited Marietta to see for myself where Leo Frank’s story ended. Sadly, even if un-surprisingly, the site isn't marked amidst what is now a busy road intersection and if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never know you've been there.

And think back to last year, with the horrific massacre of 9 Black Americans, shot as they prayed in a South Carolina church, by a man who was pictured proudly waving the Confederate flag. Incredibly up until last year, a handful of States still flew that flag from government buildings, with Mississippi still including the Confederate emblem as a component of its state flag to this day. 

The Leo Frank trial and its aftermath ripped a nation apart, re-opening fault lines that to this day have barely healed.

Parade - Review

The Other Palace, London


*****


Book by Alfred Uhry
Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Directed by Hannah Chissick

Matt Pettifor and Lucy Carter

This year’s National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) residency at the Other Palace sees this remarkable theatre company tackle Jason Robert Brown’s Parade, a musical that is as technically demanding as its story is grim and harrowing. A true story that stained the USA's early 20th Century, Parade tells of Leo Frank, a Jewish bookkeeper in Atlanta, Georgia who was accused of the murder of Mary Phagan, a 13 yo Christian girl who worked at the pencil factory he supervised. This being America’s Southland, racial prejudice was (and many will argue, still is) prevalent, with the show’s narrative being driven by the hatred of antisemitism.

Brown’s score is a musical wonder - the staccato phrasing of the opening number, The Old Red Hills Of Home setting the tone, not only for the inhumanity that is to follow but also, brilliantly, defining the bruised brutality of the Confederate states that were left licking their wounds following defeat in the Civil War barely a few decades earlier. Brown's music spans a range of Southern styles and under Laurence Stannard’s baton the ten piece band make perfect work of the demanding compositions. Rarely does one hear Brown’s melodies played to this remarkable standard.

Hannah Chissick has delivered a work of sensitive perception from her youthful cast. On the night of this review (for the two lead roles are shared) Matt Pettifor and Lucy Carter played Leo Frank and his wife Lucille. The love between the Franks is complex - he is a dominant man who struggles with his wife’s aspirations and initiative, while she has to journey from being a compliant spouse, to contemplating the horror that her husband may have been a paedophile and murderer, to finally (together with Leo) discovering their shared deep and profound love as she fights to prove his innocence. Pettifor and Carter are magnificent in their roles, melding convincing acting with well weighted vocal work. Pettifor shining in particular with How Can I Call This Home? and Come Up To My Office while Carter makes fine work of You Don’t Know This Man. The pair’s duet of All The Wasted Time in the musical’s penultimate moments is heartbreaking in its perfectly pitched poignancy.

Brown’s lyrics in Parade are razor sharp and, for the most part, this youthful cast have captured the writer's brilliantly barbed irony and comment. Conor Cox and Reuben Browne open the show with flair as the Young and Old Soldiers, respectively - and it remains a masterstroke of Brown’s genius that we do not see the Old Soldier again until the show’s closing moment of horror. Their talent however is swiftly followed by the Zoe Troy’s Mary Phagan and Ben Skym’s Frankie Epps. All too often productions of Parade will deploy adults to perform these key child roles so to see them played out by teenagers, in line with story’s narrative, and to be performed so well only adds a further layer of distinctive excellence to this production.

There is fine work throughout - Robin Franklin as Govenor Slaton (and, in a tiny role, with flawless support from Matilda Boulay as his wise supportive spouse Sally) catches the troubled gravitas of the Democrat politician. Alfie Richards as chief of police Hugh Dorsey, a man more interested in securing a conviction by any means rather than the truth is similarly on fine form. There is a turn of chilling genius from Joseph Beach as the vile, racist propagandist Tom Watson and a stylish insouciance to Iyinoluwa Michael Akintoye’s Jim Conley, the African American janitor at the pencil factory.

Perhaps the most musically uplifting moment of the show’s second half (where the lyrics could be slowed down just a fraction) is in Samuelle Durojaiye in the modest role of Angela, leading A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’ that opens the act. The song is another masterful composition from Brown, contexting the lived, oppressed, experience of Georgia’s black population - and remember that slavery had not long been abolished - with the attention and support that Frank was receiving, as the North clamoured to see the injustice against him overturned. The line in the song “There's a black man swingin' in ev'ry tree,But they don't never pay attention!” is as precise as it is tragically timeless. The song is undoubtedly grim, but Durojaiye comes close to taking the roof of The Other Palace with her wonderful delivery.

It is worth noting that the show does not just highlight racial prejudice, but picks out other failings that are still around today. In Real Big News (well led by Ciaran McCormack as journalist Britt Craig) Brown reminds us that biased media and 'fake news' have been around forever. 

The show’s design from Diego Pitarch is simply stated - and it is a credit to all that the show’s varied scenes that encompass a sun-drenched riverbank through to the Governor’s Mansion are all so well suggested.

Choreography from Matt Cole is inspired. Chissick has rightly placed much emphasis on the strength of the show’s ensemble numbers, with many moments of the show's full company proving spine-tingling. Cole’s visionary movement however sees the cast only emphasising the passion of the show’s drama through his ingenious routines.

Jason Robert Brown would do well to contemplate a quick hop across the pond. Productions of Parade are rarely finer than this!

Runs until 10th August

Photo credit: Konrad Bartelski

Parade (at Frogmore Paper Mill) - Review

Frogmore Paper Mill, Apsley



****


Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Book by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Dan Cowtan

Tré Copeland-Williams

To stage Parade at the Frogmore Paper Mill, a preserved factory that dates back to the Industrial Revolution, was an inspired idea from director Dan Cowtan. The crumbling floors, machinery and warehouses that this immersive production takes its audience through add a profound sense of both time and bleakness to Jason Robert Brown’s Tony-winner.

Parade is a carefully woven fabric of despair, made all the more desperate by the fact that Alfred Uhry’s book is a well crafted historical narrative. When 13 year old Mary Phagan was brutally murdered in the factory where she worked, her employer's Jewish superintendent, Leo Frank, was swiftly arrested and charged with the crime. A trumped up trial of fabricated evidence saw Frank convicted, with Brown's musical proceeding to a tragic conclusion.

The backdrop to these events? A bruised Confederate South, still smarting from losing the American Civil War and for whom racial prejudice was a way of life; the complex love between Frank and his (also Jewish) wife Lucille as he struggled to assimilate into the South; and the opportunistic demagoguery of extremist hate preachers and how the politicians of the day reacted to the world around them.

Connor Dyer and Sherelle Kelleher respectively play Leo and Lucille with Dyer cleverly capturing the complicated, principled man. It’s Hard To Speak My Heart is sung with gorgeous nuance and in one of Brown’s finest duets, All The Wasted Years, the vocal and emotional harmony between the pair is tangible. For actors with as yet little professional exposure, their performances are remarkable and in her solo moments Kelleher is equally impressive, offering up a moving interpretation of You Don’t Know This Man.

To be fair, the cast are all in fine form, with no weak links. Some however, are outstanding. Thomas Isherwood’s Hugh Dorsey offers a resonance that fills the space and commands our attention. Dorsey is a nasty piece of work and Isherwood conveys the man’s amorality to a tee, with his take on Somethin’ Aint Right proving one of the best of recent years. Other plaudits go to some of the (myriad of) modest parts, with Jacob Yolland’s Newt Lee, Tré Copeland-Williams’ Jim Conley, Elise Allanson’s Mrs Phagan and Beaux Harris’ Sally Slaton all making their small but crucial roles credible and believable. As the audience wander from scene to scene, the ghostly presence of Mary Phagan remains throughout and Philippa Rose not only plays Mary’s scripted work convincingly, but her very being on the fringes of each scene, adds a unique atmosphere to this particular production.

The music for this show presents a remarkable challenge. The band are located in a remote (and warm!) room, away from the mill itself, with their playing relayed around the venue via speakers. The cast are denied the usual comfort of monitors displaying the conductor’s baton but nonetheless all rise magnificently to the challenge. They are helped by the fact that the show’s musical director is Erika Gundesen, a woman who for some years now has shown a thorough understanding of this sweeping and varied score. Gundesen gets under the skin of Brown’s range of melodies, motifs and styles, coaxing perfection from her five piece band.

Credit too to Christian Ashby’s sound design. The Frogmore site is a complex complex and Ashby, for the most part, has mastered the most daunting range of challenges. There are times however that lyrics get lost in the mix, especially in multi-part harmonies when the ensemble are in full voice. Brown’s lyrics have all been carefully considered and none should be squandered.

While the use of the mill offers up some wonderful opportunities for imaginative staging, there were moments when short folk in the audience were crowded out of seeing some of the action. Likewise, if one is not quick off the mark in hopping from scene to scene, it can be easy to miss out on the quality vantage points. That being said, it's not often that one can witness The Glory being sung from a genuine riverbank, nor Blues: Feel The Rain Fall being performed by a chain gang literally knee deep, in wellies and dredging a muddy stream. And the prosecco and canapes for the milling audience during Pretty Music are a stroke of genius!

Only on for a week, one wishes the run were longer - Parade at the Mill is a well-deserved sell out.

Runs until 16th September

My Very Best of 2016

In a year that brought seismic political changes, alongside the tragic deaths of a huge number of talented artists, the showbiz talents of the world continued to turn out first class gigs.  

My favourite moments of the shows that I saw in 2016 are below and include performances from across the UK, together with the USA and also Europe. Theatre, cabaret, dance and concert performances are all included and there's no ranking - the list is entirely alphabetical. 

These shows were quite simply my (and with one exception a guest reviewer's too) highlights of the year. The links below each entry will take you to its original review on this site. 

Enjoy this look back on what was another year of stunning performances.

CABARET

The Understudy - Ceili O'Connor

A newcomer to London's cabaret scene, Ceili's one night gig in the West End was as relaxed and chatty as it was perfectly rehearsed. With a set list that included some of the biggest numbers that this talented West End performer has understudied, through to an unexpected Billy Joel megamix...

Review link



CONCERT


Ennio Morricone at the O2

To be one of the few critics invited to review this one-off gig at the packed O2 was a privilege in itself - But in an era when good film scores can be the modern equivalent of symphonies, to see this 87 year old legend conducting orchestra in choir through some of the most evocative and globally recognisable compositions of the last 50 years will stay with me forever. 

Review link


DANCE

The Red Shoes - Sadler's Wells

Matthew Bourne's newest work from his envisioned and inspirational New Adventures Company is a ballet inspired by a classic film that was all about a ballet inspired by a classic fairy tale. And all styled as a loving tribute to a Golden Age of cinema. A selection of Bernard Herrmann's film scores have been carefully stitched together to form Bourne's musical backdrop. Ashley Shaw leads the sold out run at Sadler's Wells before New Adventures tour the show around the country and with Lez Brotherston's mesmerising set, this ballet is unmissable.

Review link



THEATRE - DRAMA


The Father - Duke of York’s Theatre

Florian Zeller's play was an ingeniously agonising examination of the effects of dementia on an elderly man. Kenneth Cranham brought his heartbreakingly perceptive tour de force back to the West End, in a play (rare these days) that educated and informed its audience about the debilitating nature of the illness, as Cranham palpably shared the nightmare of dementia.

Review link


No Man’s Land - Wyndhams Theatre

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart made Pinter's deliciously absurdist take on Hampstead and Camden life a theatrical treat. No one can claim to understanding the definitive meaning of the play, but who cared?  In a production as unflinchingly 1970s as The Sweeney or Derek and Clive, these two starriest of knights shone brilliantly.

Review link


King Lear - The RSC at Stratford upon Avon and London's Barbican

Another play and quite possibly the first in the canon about the effects of ageing,  Greg Doran's time hopping take on the ageing pagan monarch was world class theatre from the RSC. Antony Sher revealed new layers of howling grief in what is perhaps the most timeless of Shakespeare's tragedies. 

Review link



The Railway Children - Kings Cross Theatre

I know its frowned upon for a critic to review his own efforts, but the opportunity to ACTUALLY DRIVE THE STEAM TRAIN (!!) in a performance of this enchanting production will stay with me forever. Appearing alongside a talented cast, and meeting the show's fabulous crew, my crash course (literally!) in becoming an engine driver might have been a Health and Safety nightmare, but to this big kid it was a five-star dream come true.

Review link



THEATRE - MUSICAL


42nd Street - Theatre du Chatelet, Paris

The UK's Stephen Mear has shipped New York to Paris with his stunningly, lavishly, choreographed take on this most American of musicals. In a cast built around talents that Mear trusts implicitly Ria Jones, Dan Burton and Jennie Dale were magnificent alongside newcomer Monique Young. Big Broadway shows don’t come more lavishly staged than this.

42nd Street is still on for a few more days and well worth the Eurostar fare!

Review link



Burnt Part Boys - Park Theatre

Modestly staged with minimal design, director Matthew Iliffe and his MD Nick Barstow brought this off-Broadway gem to London. Moving and exciting, the production was one of the tightest pieces of ensemble acting.

Review link



Fiddler On The Roof - Broadway Theatre, New York

Lyricist Sheldon Harnick told me recently that he considered this production of his classic musical as the best revival since its 1964 Broadway opening. Hofesh Shechter's re-imagined choreography made for a glorious whirl of Chagall and Klezmer inspired magic, while Alexandra Silber and Adam Kantor's Tzeitel and Motel gave a youthful integrity to the young lovers that was as relevant to 21st century New York as it was to Tsarist Russia.

Review link


The Fix - Union Theatre

The Union Theatre moved across the road, and to mark its reopening Michael Strassen reprised his take on Dana P Rowe and John Dempsey's musical swipe at the all-American political scene, with a pre Presidential Election run of The Fix. The cast was as excellent as the show's timing, with Lucy Williamson and Ken Christiansen being masterfully Machiavellian - and beautifully voiced too.

Review link


Funny Girl - Natasha J Barnes on for Sheridan Smith

Funny Girl was recognised last year as one of my best shows - But this year, when Natasha J Barnes came on to play Fanny Brice whilst Sheridan Smith was indisposed, she became another of this year's jaw-dropping sensations.

Review link


Grey Gardens - Southwark Playhouse

With a fabulous cast headed by Jenna Russell and the inimitable Sheila Hancock, this quirky Tony-winner made its European premier. Thom Southerland worked his genius over the piece and the queues stretched down to Elephant and Castle - proving yet again that London's fringe can provide a brave and quality platform for the widest range of shows.

Review link


Jesus Christ Superstar - Open Air Theatre

Timothy Sheader in conjunction with Drew McOnie's excruciatingly brilliant choreography gave London an unforgettable take on this early Rice and Lloyd Webber collaboration. Declan Bennett may well have been outstanding in the title role, but it was Tyrone Huntley's Judas, hands dripping silver blood, that lives on. The show returns to Regents Park this year. Don't miss it! 

Review link


Oliver - Curve Leicester

I caught up late to the Curve's Oliver, deliberately, to see Laura Pitt-Pulford take over the role of Nancy and of course she was marvellous. Played out against takis' glorious designs that were as dark as they were colourful, Laura's Nancy was amongst the best I've seen and proved a great way to start the year!

Review link


Parade - Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester

Parade is one of the best modern musicals written. A tough and ultimately devastating story - but one in which Jason Robert Brown has painted a picture of the Southern USA at the turn of the 20th century using a flamboyance of musical styles. Parade is a tough show to do well and up in Manchester James Baker did just that. Spines were tingling from the opening chords of The Old Red Hills Of Home and it was gratifying to see that top notch fringe theatre can exist outside of both London and August in Edinburgh.

Review link

It was also a privilege to be invited to write the programme notes for Parade, a musical that I love. You can read them here: Review link

Sunset Boulevard - Coliseum

Life imitated art at the Coliseum as a real mega movie star (Glenn Close) trod the boards as Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond. Close's stunning solos, a top notch supporting cast including Michael Xavier and Siobhan Dillon and Stephen Mear's clever choreography made for a phenomenal concert staging.

The show heads to Broadway next year for a limited run and New Yorkers are in for a treat!

Review link


Sunset Boulevard - Ria Jones on for Glenn Close

I didn’t see Ria Jones step up to this most magnificent of plates myself - but luckily that most versatile of theatre PRs Kevin Wilson was there, who reviewed the performance for me.

Review link


Waitress - Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York

Jessie Mueller leads a top notch cast in this intelligent and stylish screen to stage translation. Sara Bareilles has offered a veritable dessert buffet of delectable tunes. A modern tale that's as all-American as apple pie, the cliche-free story is an uplifting tale of discovery and strong women.

Review link

Parade (at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester) - Review

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester


*****


Music & lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Book by Alfred Uhry
Directed by James Baker

The company of Parade

As musicals go, Jason Robert Brown's Parade is a tough gig. His Tony-winning score is an immense fusion of the sounds of America’s South, tackling a monstrous story of love in adversity and the utter depths of man's capacity to hate. The Leo Frank trial in the early 20th century split America, laying bare the racist core of the Confederacy. 80 years later, Brown's show was to become a troubling piece that held a mirror to its country’s soul - a mirror that to this day a large part of that nation still resolutely refuses to look in.

One of the first productions to be mounted in this newest of Manchester's venues, the old mill building lends itself well to Parade's disquieting storyline. Tough shows however require a strong cast and in this ensemble James Baker has assembled a company of standout performers. The show opens with the uncomfortably stirring The Old Red Hills Of Home and playing the Young Soldier, Aidan Banyard sets spines tingling within the first 30 seconds. As the show unfolds Banyard's vocal magnificence is found to be replicated throughout the entire cast.

Any production of Parade has to rest on strength in its leads of Leo and Lucille Frank. Tom Lloyd shines as the unfortunate Jewish accountant who finds himself framed and racially persecuted for a crime he did not commit, the rape and murder of a 13yo. Lloyd captures Frank's stubborn indignity perfectly, his slight frame metamorphosing into a performance of utter litheness in Come Up To My Office, before slumping back into quiet and purposeful, pleading, principle within It's Hard To Speak My Heart.

More than a match for Lloyd, Laura Harrison's Lucille brings a stunningly voiced maturity to the Southern belle that is Frank's troubled wife. Her initial uncertainty as to his innocence, that slowly forges itself into a righteous defence of her innocent husband is one of the finest female turns seen this year. Brown has written Lucille some spectacular numbers and Harrison brings an especially beautiful resonance to You Don't Know This Man, alongside the heartbreaking irony of her powerful duet with Leo, All The Wasted Time.

There is not a weak link in this cast. Memorable for their multi-role excellence are Matt Mills and James Wolstenhome. The sole black man in the cast, Mills has to pick up all of the parts that demand an African American male - and in playing wily convict Jim Conley, Mills displays a sublime mastery of the blues. There is an unsettling insouciance to his manner that only adds to the show's momentum. Mention too, here, for Shekinah McFarlane's Angela with a performance that more than suggests Cynthia Erivo's style and presence in its pedigree.

Wolstenhome however is simply a chameleon of performing excellence. It is hard to believe his Governor Slaton is played by the same man who also plays the (sometimes gutter) journalist Britt Craig, with his take on Craig's big number, Real Big News proving flawless, shocking and exhilarating.

Andrew Gallo's manipulative prosecutor (and Governor in waiting) Hugh Dorsey brings just the right amount of deviant corruption to the politics of his game, likewise Nathan Summer's portrayal of the evil Tom Watson. Spewing racist bile through the medium of hymn, Summer chills as he taps into the South's collective frustration at their racial purity being defiled,

The show's staging is inspired, with Baker using the mill's full space alongside William Whelton's clever choreography, to jar our attention. If one or two of his directions have wandered slightly off-piste it's no big deal - the strength of this show lies in the stripped-down excellence that Baker coaxes from his actors.

Musically, Tom Chester directs a 9 piece band that pays magnificent service to Brown's musical maelstrom. And in a nod to the trio of Chester, Baker and producer (and local girl) Katy Lipson, Manchester is unlikely to have seen many fringe performances assembled to such a high standard of production value. If you're coming from afar, the show is well worth the train fare. If you live in the North West, Parade is unmissable.


Runs until 5th June
Photo credit: Anthony Robling


Click here to read my foreword to Parade.

My Thoughts on Jason Robert Brown's Parade

As Jason Robert Brown's Parade opens at Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre this week, I was invited to write the Foreword for the production's programme.

With the producers' permission, my article is reprinted below. 

It is a tremendously exciting event for Manchester's newest theatre, Hope Mill Theatre, to be staging the city’s première of Parade, a show that is both inspirational and yet deeply troubling. The musical is a complex, true and thrilling story that touches upon some of the worst aspects of humanity while celebrating a love that flourished in the most desperate of circumstances.

Jason Robert Brown’s Tony-winner kicks off during the 1913 Confederate Memorial Day Parade in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil War had been fought (and lost) some 50 years earlier and it is the aftermath of that defeat that powers the context of this show. 

The Southern States had fought the North in a desperate, bloody struggle to hold on to their right to enslave African Americans. Slavery was (and is) de-humanising and barbaric and yet, to a majority of folk in the Confederacy, it was not only acceptable, it was desirable. Southern racism was ingrained and the Confederate flag remains a chilling emblem of the white supremacists.

As that 1913 parade passed by, Mary Phagan a white 13 year old girl from Marietta, just outside Atlanta, was brutally raped and murdered in the city’s pencil factory where she worked. Amid a hue and cry for justice, it didn't take Atlanta’s Police Department long to be conveniently pointed in the wrong direction, accusing Leo Frank, the factory superintendent. Frank may have been white, but he was a Yankee from the North and worse, a Jew. 

Parade explores how Frank was subsequently framed and how he and his wife Lucille, fought back. Child abuse and murder may not be regular subjects for a musical theatre treatment, yet from this dark core, composer Jason Robert Brown has fashioned one of the finest musicals to have emerged in the last 20 years.

Parade succeeds on so many levels. It has a finely crafted score and libretto, it's a history lesson and a towering love story. Brown won a Tony for the score; listen out for the traditional melodies of the South, carefully woven into his work. There’s Gospel, Spiritual, Blues and Swing in there, with the composer saving perhaps one of musical theatre’s finest coups for his Act One Finale. As Parade’s narrative reaches a horrendous turning point, Brown has his citizens of Atlanta launch into an exhilarating cakewalk. Where Kander and Ebb brought Cabaret’s first half to a troubling close with ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, Brown’s cakewalk juxtaposes jubilation with injustice. Rarely has an array of swirling Southern petticoats and frocks been quite so stomach churning.

As a history lesson, Parade is up there with the best. The opening number ‘The Old Red Hills Of Home’ hits the audience with an unforgiving staccato percussion that soon includes a funereal chime alongside discordant strings, before evolving into a chilling yet (whisper it not) discomfortingly stirring anthem. The song is remarkable in that between its opening and closing bars, Brown tells the entire story of the South’s Civil War. A young and handsome Confederate soldier sings the opening lines, who by the song’s end is a gnarled and crippled veteran. Wounded and bitter, the old soldier dreams of the ‘lives that we led when the South land was free’. 

Brown also kicks off the second half with a punch. While Parade is famously about anti-Semitism, ‘A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’ is sung by two of the Governor of Georgia’s African American Domestic Staff, both well aware that while the Frank furore is gripping the nation, their lot hasn't significantly changed, even after the abolition of slavery. Riley, the Governor’s Chauffeur has a line ‘the local hotels wouldn't be so packed, if a little black girl had gotten attacked’ that should prick at America’s collective conscience even today, while his killer lyric a few bars on, ‘there’s a black man swingin’ in every tree, but they don't never pay attention!’ has a devastating simplicity.

Parade also beats to the drum of a passionate love story. Early on we find Leo and Lucille questioning their very different Jewish lifestyles. He’s from Brooklyn, a ‘Yankee with a college education’, while she is a privileged belle about whom Frank observes ‘for the life of me I cannot understand how God created you people Jewish AND Southern!’. There is a cultural gulf between the pair which, upon Leo’s arrest, only widens. How Alfred Uhry’s book and Brown’s lyrics portray the couple’s deepening love, is a literary master stroke. 

While the show was to receive numerous nominations in both Broadway’s 1999 awards season and later in 2008 on its London opening, the Opening at New York's Lincoln Centre disappointed, running for barely 100 performances. Variety magazine called it the ‘ultimate feel-bad musical’ and the crowds stayed away.

It was however, to be at London’s modest Donmar Warehouse, directed by Rob Ashford who had been the show's original Dance Captain on Broadway, that the show was to soar. So much so that Brown took the Donmar production back for a successful run in Los Angeles, with Lara Pulver, the Donmar’s Lucille, still in the lead. Thom Southerland’s fringe production a few years later at London’s Southwark Playhouse received similar plaudits. 

So why was Parade loved in London, yet shunned in New York? Wise theatre heads have suggested that perhaps Americans have little appetite for a musical that focuses upon such an ugly feature of their country’s history.

100 years on, what has been the legacy of the Frank case? For good, it served to spawn the Anti-Defamation League, America’s anti-fascist organisation. However the episode also re-ignited the burning crosses of the Klu Klux Klan. I recently visited Marietta to see for myself where Leo Frank’s story ended. Sadly, even if un-surprisingly, the site isn't marked amidst what is now a busy road intersection and if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never know you've been there.

And think back to last year, with the horrific massacre of 9 Black Americans, shot as they prayed in a South Carolina church, by a man who was pictured proudly waving the Confederate flag. Incredibly up until last year, a handful of States still flew that flag from government buildings, with Mississippi still including the Confederate emblem as a component of its state flag to this day. 

The Leo Frank trial and its aftermath ripped a nation apart, re-opening fault lines that to this day have barely healed.

© Jonathan Baz 2016 All rights reserved

Parade opens at the Hope Mill Theatre on 18th May and plays until 5th June. 

For tickets, click here

Parade (at London Theatre Workshop) - Review

London Theatre Workshop, London


***


Music & lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Book by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Jody Tranter

Victoria Hope

Jason Robert Brown’s Parade is a beautifully constructed Tony-winner of a show that shuttered early. Broadway’s loss was to prove London’s gain, as Rob Ashford (who was the original show’s dance captain) went on to stage a sell-out run at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007, before Thom Southerland was to match his feat at the Southwark Playhouse some 4 years later. 

So why did the New York public shun the work? Possibly because Parade holds a mirror up to an ugly stain on America’s history: the brute racism of the country’s Confederate Southland. And no-one, least of all the Americans, likes to hear of their own nation’s fallibilities.

Parade tells the true, tragic tale of Leo Frank an Atlanta Jew who was falsely accused of murdering a Christian girl and subsequently lynched. Frank’s murder trial, in which he was framed before being found guilty (though was quite likely en-route to a pardon at the time of his lynching), polarised a nation, to this day still split by the Mason Dixon line, as the North campaigned for his liberty. The Frank case was made all the more distinctive in American history as it was a white man who was lynched. Brown’s genius is to pull none of his punches and as act two opens with Rumblin’ and a Rollin’, the show’s only two black cast members sing the lyric “there's a black man swingin' in ev'ry tree”, acknowledging the more familiar horror of the Deep South’s racist heritage. 

Jody Tranter is ambitious in mounting the show in the modest confines of Fulham’s London Theatre Workshop. Brown’s glorious music channels styles that range from ballad, to gospel and even a cakewalk with the composer bestowing unforgiving complexity on his melodies. Fortunately under musical director Erika Gundesen’s five piece ensemble, the justice that was denied Leo Frank is beautifully done to the score and a special mention to drummer Tom Chester for nailing the staccato beat of fascism that Brown intended.

Notwithstanding some moments of first rate acting however, with Ross Barnes’ Leo Frank convincing as the humble Frank, the musical magnificence does not extend to the cast’s singing. A modest budget has kept the company un-mic’d and as a consequence, all too often, Brown’s razor sharp lyrics are inaudible – this from a reviewer sat in the front row! And when the ensemble voices kick off (beautifully) any solo moments are lost in a vocal melee.

Songs that should pack a punch, particularly You Don’t Know This Man, fail to hit their intended sweet spot and at times it is hard to find the emotional connection to the work that in a well-executed show, should be wringing the audience’s consciences and heart strings.

There are some moments of class: Lily de-la-Haye’s Lucille Frank is a picture of tragic desperation as the jubilant town celebrates the guilty verdicts in a harrowing act one closer, whilst Nazerene Williams and Michael Moulton deliver the aforementioned second half opener with strength and gusto. If some of the doubling up of roles is occasionally confusing, Victoria Hope’s multi-part contribution to the show is delivered with a vocal punch that makes us sit up and listen. Her take on My Child Will Forgive Me is sublime and if (most of) the rest of the cast were to copy hers’ (and to be fair, also the veteran Dudley Rogers’) excellent voicework, it can only be for the production’s good.

Whilst a modest budget is understandable, sloppy typos in the programme are inexcusable and hint at a lack of attention to detail - Jason Robert Brown and this talented company deserve better from the producers.

Runs to 13th September