The opening number of “Parade” has always challenged its audience through purposeful discordance.
Titled “The Old Red Hills of Home,” the song begins with a wide-eyed Southern soldier bidding his sweetheart farewell during the Civil War. The tale then advances a half-century to 1913 Atlanta, where Confederate flags still fly and townsfolk pledge to “sing ‘Dixie’ once again.” All the while, propulsive drums, lush strings and rousing melodies belie the lyrics’ unsettling sentiment.
That 2023’s Tony-winning musical revival is concluding its North American tour at the Kennedy Center — whose chairman is now President Donald Trump — only amplifies the dissonance.
“Parade” tells the story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was scapegoated, imprisoned and ultimately lynched over the murder of 13-year-old factory worker Mary Phagan. The show is a parable of antisemitism, first and foremost, but also tribalism and intolerance run rampant.
It feels jarring — but defiant — to see it at a place taken over by a president whose rhetoric has been repeatedly condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, the organization founded in response to Frank’s murder conviction. Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon press secretary in Trump’s administration, even decried Frank’s posthumous pardon by posting on X in 2023 and 2024 the widely discredited claim that he “raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl.”
“Parade” booked its run under the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership and, after other shows pulled out in the wake of Trump’s takeover, is still being mounted at its Eisenhower Theater — complete with a preshow address recorded by Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Georgia). The production thus has completed the promise composer Jason Robert Brown made in February, when he tweeted, “PARADE is playing the Kennedy Center in August and we’re not changing One Word.”
Sure enough, the touring production seamlessly re-creates an exceptional Broadway revival that earned Michael Arden the first of his two best director Tonys. (The second came this year for the robot romance “Maybe Happy Ending.”) It helps that this take on “Parade,” a 1998 musical with music and lyrics by Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry, originated as an economical New York City Center concert staging before transferring to Broadway. Mounted on Dane Laffrey’s stately set, the production uses Sven Ortel’s projections — featuring dates, names and archival photos — to orient the audience amid a slew of time jumps and characters to track.
Chief among them is Max Chernin’s Frank, an Atlanta pencil factory superintendent with a chip on his shoulder and Brooklynite homesickness in his heart. After the magnetic Ben Platt brought his signature vibrato and neuroticism to the role on Broadway, Chernin leans into Leo’s dignity and detachment to deliver a more staid performance. As Leo’s underappreciated (and underestimated) wife, Lucille, Micaela Diamond played off Platt with otherworldly vocals but an overly affected accent. Here, Talia Suskauer tones down the twang in a performance that still rings of pluck and persistence.
For anyone familiar with Frank, “Parade” is unnervingly inevitable. The first act amounts to a kangaroo courtroom drama as the case’s prosecutor, future Georgia governor Hugh Dorsey (a slimy Andrew Samonsky), holds witnesses’ feet to the anti-Frank fire and a gossip-mongering reporter (Michael Tacconi) fans the flames. After intermission, Lucille’s efforts to exonerate her husband take center stage as a fleeting triumph swiftly gives way to enduring tragedy. And the most pertinent of the musical’s many gut punches arrives in the show’s dying moments, when we learn that Tom Watson (Griffin Binnicker), a white supremacist whose inflammatory writing helped incite Frank’s lynching, was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate.
Featuring soaring anthems, jaunty show tunes, rousing power ballads and eerie laments, Brown’s Tony-winning score arrives at the cross-section of melodic complexity and hummable accessibility. As Jim Conley, the janitor widely believed to have killed Phagan (Olivia Goosman), Ramone Nelson brings down the house with the bluesy “Feel the Rain Fall.” Chernin and Suskauer handsomely harmonize on the spine-tingling duet “This Is Not Over Yet.” But the ultimate showstopper is “The Factory Girls/Come Up to My Office,” as three young witnesses’ coerced testimony is hauntingly juxtaposed against an imagined version of Frank who actually committed the crime.
There will be fewer moments for theatergoers to relish at the Kennedy Center over the next year now that its Broadway Center Stage series is on life support and the buzziest tours are largely bolting for the National Theatre. But my audience did particularly enjoy one, courtesy of Sally Slaton (Alison Ewing), the wife of Georgia Gov. John M. Slaton (Brian Vaughn at Wednesday night’s performance). As her husband concedes that commuting Frank’s sentence will end his political career, Sally responds: “I’d a whole lot rather be married to a fine ex-governor than be first lady to a chicken.”
Cue applause.
Parade, through Sept. 7 at the Kennedy Center in Washington. About 2 hours and 30 minutes, including intermission. kennedy-center.org.
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