Friday, January 24, 2025

Parade Tour at Hennepin Arts (Orpheum Theatre)

Three days after Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as President, the North American tour of Parade had its official premiere at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. The theme of injustice in America seemed terribly fitting.

Max Chernin (center) as Leo Frank with the
Company of Parade. Photo by Joan Marcus.
 
With a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown (who was in attendance), Parade follows the true story of a Jewish factory superintendent who in 1913 was accused of murdering a factory worker, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. The musical originally premiered on Broadway in 1998 and won Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Original Score (out of nine nominations). Despite positive reviews, the show ran only 84 performances on Broadway, followed by a U.S. tour.

The current tour is based on the 2023 Broadway revival of the show and is heavily influenced by the 2007 London production at the Donmar Warehouse, which added and changed some songs and characters. Director Michael Arden's stripped-down production features excellent use of projections, both for creating the setting, and to show us photographs of the real people involved in the case as they are introduced on stage. It’s a constant reminder that the story we are seeing really happened just over 100 years ago.

Talia Suskauer and Max Chernin. Photo by Joan Marcus
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 Parade starts on Confederate Memorial Day in 1913, which is celebrated by a big parade. Leo Frank has lived in Atlanta for several years and has married into a Southern Jewish family, but he still feels like an outsider as a Yankee. He even asks his wife, Lucille, how it’s possible to be both Jewish and Southern at the same time. And he doesn’t understand why there is so much celebration of a war that was lost by the South.

Leo is bewildered when he is arrested for the murder, and convinced it is a mistake, while outside in Atlanta and across the country, his trial becomes a sensation, bringing together tensions between Blacks and Jews, North and South, and the wishes of a popular governor and an ambitious district attorney, propelled by muckraking journalists.

Andrew Samonsky and Ramone Nelson. Photo by Joan Marcus

Another big change in the new production of Parade is that the leads, Leo and Lucille Frank, are for the first time portrayed by Jewish actors. Max Chernin is wonderful as Leo, an unassuming-seeming man with deep convictions. He is matched by Talia Suskauer, whose Lucille supports Leo quietly until she can no longer stay silent, and challenges his need to do it alone. Their big duet, “This Is Not Over Yet,” was met by extended applause from the Orpheum audience for its swell of hope and emotion.

The cast is universally excellent, but a few standouts include Chris Shyer as the Governor of Georgia, who is challenged by Lucille Frank to revisit Leo’s conviction and Alison Ewing as his wife Sally. Danielle Lee Greaves plays Minnie McKnight, the Franks' maid and a character new to this production and Ramone Nelson as Jim Conley has one of the most gorgeous theater voices I've ever heard. The music in the production is beautiful, from the anthemic, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” to the chilling accusation of “The Factory Girls.” Complex melodies repeat and intertwine throughout the piece and are performed beautifully by the company, many of whom performed in the recent Broadway production. 

I’ve seldom seen the audience at the Orpheum so rapt. Parade is an important, stirring, and all-too-timely musical, and this production is gorgeous, compelling, and heartbreaking. Don’t miss it!

Here are some bonus resources to dig into after seeing Parade:


If you're interested in how the musical changed over the last 25 years, this is a great website to check out. And if you're REALLY interested, check out this link to a 95-page master’s thesis called “Parade Diverges: The 1998 Broadway and 2007 London Productions and their Critical Receptions by Julie L. Haverkate.