‘Parade’ Is a Strange Broadway Musical Puzzle, Lost in Time
What is Parade trying to show? What is it trying to say? These are the questions left on this critic’s mind after seeing this musical for a second time—first at New York City Center Encores last year, its production now transferred to Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (booking to August 6).
Judging by the response of audiences on both occasions, it may be a minority view; there was rousing applause at a recent afternoon matinee, as Tony-winning superstar Ben Platt as Leo Frank and Micaela Diamond as his wife Lucille—who sing both their strangely-written parts very well—endured and faced down the Antisemitic bigotry and injustice that coalesced to convict the real-life Frank for the murder of factory girl Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) in Marietta, Georgia in 1913.
Frank was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to hang. This sentence was ultimately commuted to life imprisonment, though Frank was lynched to death by a gang who sprung him from jail in 1915. In 1986, Frank was posthumously pardoned by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, although not officially cleared of the murder. In 2019 the case was officially reopened, and is ongoing at the time of writing.