The musical prologue that opens Jason Robert Brown (music and lyrics) and Alfred Uhry’s (book) “Parade” is a deeply disquieting immersion in cognitive dissonance. “The Old Red Hills of Home” soars and swells, belting harmonies reaching the proverbial rafters. But the lush score comes with lyrics that are horrifying. This is an anthem praising antebellum Georgia and the pre-Civil War glory days when the state was “pure” and “the Southland was free.”
By the time the final chorus arrives, the stage is storming with Confederate flags and the blood-and-soil energy of a KKK rally. Running through Aug. 17 in the Loop’s CIBC Theatre, “Parade” is both a history lesson and contemporary confrontation.
Set between 1913-17 in rural Georgia, the musical is an indictment of a world where habeas corpus doesn’t exist, the judicial system is corrupt and innocent minorities are imprisoned and executed in the name of honor and justice. Directed to a fine, piercing point by Michael Arden, it all feels far too familiar.
And while there’s an epic, uplifting love story staunchly embedded in “Parade,” its shining warmth is contrasted by the musical’s unflinching brutality.
Iconic director Harold Prince initially conceived of “Parade” — which originally debuted in 1998 — inspired by the story of Leo Frank (Max Chernin), a Jewish man who ran a pencil factory in rural Georgia before he was accused and convicted of killing a young employee and then kidnapped from prison and lynched in 1917. Frank’s fate is a foregone conclusion from the start. Despite the preordained outcome, you won’t be able to look away.
Frank, a northerner with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, couldn’t be more of an outsider in Georgia, despite the fact that his wife, Lucille, (Talia Suskauer) is a lifelong southerner. In April 1913, he was accused of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan (Olivia Goosman). Over the next four years, “Parade” shows Frank’s harrowing journey through a judicial system that’s rotten to the core, his trial and extrajudicial execution explored in a freight train of a nearly sung-through score that barely stops for breath.
Arden picked up a 2023 Tony for directing the production, which also won the 2023 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. It’s easy to see why. Throughout, he draws a razor-wire between bleak and beautiful.
Chernin’s Leo and Suskauer’s Lucille are at the nexus of “Parade.” Chernin is wondrously versatile, moving from the menacing, vaudevillian caricature of “Come Up to My Office” to the wrenching, twined ardor of “All the Wasted Time” with mesmerizing authenticity.
Suskauer’s Lucille is an unswerving bulwark of goodness in a backwoods swamp largely defined by vile racism and antisemitism. Suskauer’s “Do it Alone” is a plea for connection and howl against bigotry, its lyrics (“I could start to scream/Across the whole damned South/And never shut my mouth”) powered by rage and terror. Together, Chernin and Suskauer have remarkable chemistry.
The cast is rich with standouts. As Atlanta District Attorney Hugh Dorsey, Andrew Samonsky is absolutely chilling as a proud, good-old boy with a slick haircut, an Elmer Gantry-like ability to sway a crowd and a dangerous amount of power. As pencil factory janitor Jim Conley, Ramone Nelson is a heartbreaker, his apprehensive dread ratcheting upward as he’s interrogated by cops who have already determined what his answers should be.
The production doesn’t flinch from the cruel ironies inherent in the sensational media frenzy and prolonged court battles that surrounded Frank’s case. Hundreds of Black men were lynched between 1913 and 1917, but unlike Frank, few of them made the papers. When Black domestic workers Riley (Prentiss E. Mouton) and Angela (Oluchi Nwaokorie) join factory nightwatchman Newt Lee (Robert Knight) in the percussive, sinewy “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin,’ “ the double standard is addressed with gallows humor as dark as the grave.
The production is enhanced to haunting impact by Dane Laffrey’s minimalistic set and Sven Ortel’s stunning projections. The latter include historical photos of the major players — the Franks, the D.A. and Mary Phagan among them — as well as images of angry mobs and Civil War battlefields littered with corpses and bombed-out buildings.
Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant’s choreography is equally effective, never more so than a woman in a crowd surging with southern pride hoists her arm in a salute that stops about 10 degrees short of a full Sieg Heil.
In all, “Parade” is a vortex that pulls its audience into a cruel, savage segment of history. It also holds up an unflinching mirror to the present.
Side note: The production’s final performance in Chicago falls on the 108th anniversary of Frank’s murder.