'Parade' revival strikes chilling parallels between past injustice and present-day headlines

San Francisco Chronicle​

23-05-2025

There's something terribly haunting about watching a work set in the past and being only able to think of the present.
When the musical 'Parade' first premiered on Broadway in 1998, visuals like newspaper boys proudly waving confederate flags were a means of bringing audiences back to a dark political atmosphere from long ago. In 2025, such bone-chilling spectacles are emerging once again, marking the ominous and timely return of a show about Leo Frank, an American Jew falsely blamed, then lynched, in response to the murder of a 13-year-old girl in 1915.
Theater titan Harold Prince co-conceived the original production, which won Tony Awards for best book and best original score. After undergoing significant restaging, the 2023 Broadway revival itself earned two Tonys (best revival of a musical, best direction of a musical), leading to a national tour that's currently playing San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre, in partnership with Broadway SF, from May 20-June 8.
But the 2023 production's task in telling Frank's tale has changed from history lesson to alarm bell. Hopefully it's ringing loud enough for all to hear, especially in light of a ghastly killing of two Israeli Embassy aides outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., which happened less than 24 hours before Thursday's curtain rose.
Led by stellar performances from Max Chernin, who continues his run from Broadway as the Brooklyn-born Leo, and Talia Suskauer as his devoted, daring wife Lucille, 'Parade' unfolds as a doomed love story set amid the deep-rooted racism and rising antisemitic sentiments of pre-WWI Atlanta, Ga. The pair provides genuine sparks as a couple that processes the false charges against Frank — first with genuine confusion, then calcifying resentment.
Chernin and Suskauer add their impressive pipes to a talented cast that also includes longtime San Francisco actor Alison Ewing in the role of Sally Slayton, wife to Georgia Gov. John Slayton (played with aplomb by Chris Shyer). Staged with a high center square not unlike an elevated courtroom floor, elaborate backdrops and props are eschewed in favor of a screen that regularly projects archival photos of the real-life characters and settings from the time.
It can feel like a lot, and though the music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown ('The Bridges of Madison County') never trade substance for frivolity, the need for song does occasionally feel forced by convention rather than warranted by plot.
That said, some numbers do work quite well, including one led by Michael Tacconi as sleazy newspaper reporter Britt Craig. Employing an upbeat melody akin to the Pied Piper, Craig goes around enticing various townsfolk (including the victim's friends, the Franks' maid, and a security guard on duty at the factory where the girl was killed) to remember things that never happened. It's a clever way to portray how quickly disinformation can flourish — especially when it's being carried on the back of a deceptively sweet tune.
Later, at the close of the show's first act, Brown plays with the convention of singing in the round to hammer home the identical wording and demeanor of three girls clearly coached to lie by the prosecution about Frank's alleged inappropriate conduct toward them. These are the moments where song and story most aptly collide, though a strong book from playwright Alfred Uhry ('Driving Miss Daisy') ensures the show never steers far off-course.
If the first half of 'Parade' is an exercise in how to frame an innocent man, its concluding portion celebrates the tenacity of a woman desperate to free her husband from the ticking clock of a death sentence.
Found guilty by a jury of his 'peers,' Frank loses hope in his jail cell following two years of failed appeals, inspiring Lucille to take her cause directly to Gov. Slayton. It's heart-wrenching to watch them inspire a host of witnesses to recant their testimonies while knowing the victory is ill-fated.
Staged gracefully, the sequence of Frank being kidnapped from his cell and lynched in a nearby forest by a vengeful mob also offers one of the few moments in the entire show when he is free to speak his truth. After once again proclaiming his innocence, Frank uses his last breaths to recite the Sh'ma, a Jewish prayer often uttered as one's final words. It's a beautiful coda for a show that mostly finds the rest of its characters speaking on Frank's behalf.