Theatre in Review: Parade (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)Parade begins with a gesture so sweeping it takes one's breath away. The opening number, "The Old Red Hills of Home," begins in 1863 with a young Confederate soldier bidding farewell his girl. Pledging himself to "a way of life that's pure/Of the truth that must endure," he adds of his beloved hills, "Let all the blood of the North spill upon them/'Til they've paid for what they've wrought/Taken back the lies they've taught." Suddenly, he stands face-to-face with a grizzled, partly crippled veteran in a tattered uniform; he is staring at himself, fifty years later. As the old man bitterly notes, "Not much is left of the old hills of Georgia," adding, "I close my eyes and hear/All the treasures we held dear." Meanwhile a countermelody, "The Dream of Atlanta," is added to the mix; it is Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, and the assembled citizenry takes the stage, insisting, "For those proud and valiant men/We'll sing 'Dixie' once again." The music is soaring, the words disturbing, the overall effect both horrifying and hauntingly beautiful. In six-and-a-half, minutes, an entire worldview -- romantic, resentful, insular -- is sketched in, unforgettably. This bravura sequence is not mere showing off by composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown; indeed, it provides a crucial foundation to everything that follows. Parade dramatizes the notorious real-life case of Leo Frank, a Brooklyn Jew living in Atlanta who was convicted of killing a thirteen-year-old girl named Mary Phagan. Frank's trial, plagued by irregularities, drew national interest, casting a stark light on the surrounding atmosphere of hysteria and populist hatred. An underperformer in its 1998 debut, the musical has acquired a new urgency thanks to the resurgent antisemitism currently plaguing us. In truth, it has always been one of the two or three best musicals of the last quarter century, foregrounding a wrenching personal drama against a teeming canvas of prejudice, media manipulation, and political chicanery. Unlike most musicals, it minces no words, building its case unsentimentally and climaxing in an absolute haymaker of an eleven o'clock number. If the current production is not ideal, the show remains a stunner with much to say about today's poisoned political discourse. It's an exhilarating demonstration of what musical theatre can achieve. As portrayed in Alfred Uhry's book, Leo is a stranger in a strange land, baffled by honeyed Southern manners and "trapped beside a wife who would prefer that I say, 'Howdy!', not 'Shalom'." (Uhry, author of Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, knows everything about the Jewish community of Georgia and its semi-assimilations.) A striver and a bit of a cold fish -- as his spouse, Lucille, understands all too well -- Leo manages the pencil factory where Mary's body is found. Her death unleashes so much fear and fury in the community that the cynical district attorney notes, "Hangin' another n----- ain't enough this time. We gotta do better." Leo, a Northerner, a Jew, and, most likely, the last person to see Mary alive, fits the bill, neatly. It's the old blood libel of murderous Jews and Christian children, put to practical use. As Michael Arden's luxuriously cast production makes clear, everyone involved has an angle to play: Jay Armstrong Johnson as a seedy, boozing reporter, hoovering up and retailing wild rumors about Leo's sex life; Kelli Barrett as Mary's mother, praising her daughter in song before spitting an epithet at Leo; Eddie Cooper as the Black janitor who discovers Mary's body, becoming the first suspect; Manoel Felciano as a demagogic magazine publisher, drumming up hatred against Leo for reasons of his own; Alex Joseph Grayson as a factory worker who will testify to anything if it keeps him off a chain gang; Sean Allan Krill as the governor who moves to reopen Leo's case, torpedoing his career in the process; Howard McGillin as a wily, score-keeping judge; and Paul Alexander Nolan as an unscrupulous prosecuting attorney eying the governor's mansion. As these and other characters horn in on Leo's case, Brown's score makes good on the promise of the opening sequence, blending ragtime, blues, hymns, anthems, foxtrots, and county-western ballads into a unified whole. Standouts include the upbeat "The Picture Show," sung by Mary and a young admirer; "The Factory Girls," a cascade of lies set to a gorgeous melody; and the savagely satirical "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'," in which the governor's dry-eyed servants note that a Black girl's death would never become a cause célèbre. (The latter is performed with deadpan fury by Douglas Lyons and Courtnee Carter.) Brown's lyrics are alternately mordant and poetic. (Mary's smile, we are told, was "like a glass of lemonade.") For all that Arden's production captures the tumult of a jackal-like assemblage feasting on the innocent Leo's reputation, it suffers from a slight -- and regrettable -- distancing effect. Most of the action unfolds on the raised platform that set designer Dane Laffrey has placed at center stage, filling the surrounding deck with chairs, pews, tables, and lamps. It's a cluttered environment, with the actors held at a remove. Also, given the flood of exposition and the sophistication of Brown's lyrics, Jon Weston's sound design could be a bit sharper and clearer. (On the plus side, projection designer Sven Ortel has found archive photos of all the real-life characters, an eerily evocative touch. Susan Hilferty's costumes constitute an acute study of class and racial lines. Heather Gilbert's lighting, making bold use of warm tungsten looks combined with starkly deployed side washes and light curtain effects, is never less than superb.) Indeed, so vivid is the gallery of supporting characters that for a time the production nearly loses track of Leo and his troubled marriage to Lucille. Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond are skilled, honest performers -- close in age to the real Leo and Lucille -- but they are not outsized presences like Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello, who created the roles. Their work, effective but smaller in scale, can be a bit hard to pick out on the crowded, distant stage. Diamond is heartbreakingly wistful in "What Am I Waiting For?", wondering why her marriage is so lifeless, but she lacks a certain force when facing down the press in "You Don't Know This Man." Platt makes real comedy out of Leo's Southern discomfort in "How Can I Call This Home?" but, after his arrest, he seems to fade away, even in the courtroom scenes. This situation improves markedly in the second act, when Leo and Lucille team up to fight the system. Diamond finds a controlled fury in "Do It Alone, Leo," venting over years of being ignored. She and Platt lend heroic vocals to the joyous, propulsive "This is Not Over Yet," when Lucille persuades the governor to commute Leo's sentence. And their climactic duet, "All the Wasted Time," an all-too-brief moment of real communion, is as shattering as anyone has a right to expect. To be sure, Arden's staging has many successes: Leo all but pushed off the platform by a covey of avid parade watchers. A frozen tableau of agony as Mary's coffin is lowered into the ground. Mary's mother departing the witness stand in a fury, refusing a proffered handkerchief. Leo, surrounded by a lynch mob, quietly saying the Sh'ma prayer. The director is aptly aided by choreographers Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant who deliver, among other things, the chaotic, surreal celebration that engulfs the city following Leo's conviction. Arden also provides a stunningly effective final tableau that bring us to the present moment, linking the hatreds of yesterday and today. Ironically, a show originally dismissed in some quarters as being too preachy has taken on an unsettling immediacy; clearly, Brown and Uhry (as well as co-conceiver Harold Prince) were ahead of the times. In its best moments, this Parade matches its writers' ambitions; it makes most contemporary musicals look utterly thin and trivial. --David Barbour 
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