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Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: A full-throated ‘Parade' marches into the CIBC Theatre with a fresh emphasis on human fragility
All these years of reviewing Broadway productions followed by first national tours of the same title have taught me that the casts that take to the road often are the better of the two. Why? First, because musicals on Broadway have to worry too much about stars, Instagram followings and a host of other political factors, as well as the artistry. Second, because directors and casting directors typically don't know who is really right, or wrong, for a role until after the production is up and running. And, third, because Broadway shows have ensemble members and understudies who not only study the show night after night and figure out its artistry and mechanics but often were always better than the leads anyway. When they move up on a tour, they can be quite astonishing. I'm only talking about Equity shows and first tours here, not tired bus and trucks or cheapened one-nighters. And this only applies when the original director and other artists are actually involved in the tour, which is not always the case. If you see 'restaged by' on the program title page, watch out. But for 'Parade,' which is a magnificent tour featuring far more organic and high-quality singing and acting than the nonetheless award-winning 2023 Broadway revival, all of that applies. Spectacularly so. Director Michael Arden clearly is still in charge. And I've seen enough of Jason Robert Brown in a rehearsal room over the years to know he does not mess around when performers are working on his music (I went all the way to Green Bay, Wisconsin, 25 years ago to see the first tour of 'Parade' and found Brown in the pit, conducting his own score). All of that is self-evident at the CIBC Theatre, where I really can't praise the two lead performers, Max Chernin and Talia Suskauer, highly enough. Not only is their singing glorious (as is that of many others in this cast, including, especially Ramone Nelson, Trevor James and Robert Knight), but the two performers essaying the married couple of Leo and Lucille Frank have both a self-obfuscating humility and a rigorous lack of sentimentality encapsulated in their performances. That's crucial to the telling of this somber, real-life story of a Jewish pencil factory manager in 1913 Atlanta who was first accused of murdering one of his young workers. He was railroaded at his sensationalized trial by the smoldering antisemitism founded in the South in the first decades of the 20th century and then lynched by a mob. Alfred Uhry's 1998 book took enormous pains to avoid obvious melodrama and while it would go much too far to suggest that the show claims Frank was complicit in his own injustice, it does make very clear that his personality, his chilly remove, his myopia, sure didn't help. As a result, 'Parade' gains a genuinely tragic patina; you leave the theater not just with a renewed sense of the constant ubiquity of ignorance and evil but also of people ill-equipped to understand even the most basic of facts. Even about themselves. Chernin makes that very clear. And although Suskauer is playing a woman who truly loves her husband, she also makes clear the cost of her husband's wound-tight self-sufficiency on what Lucille had hoped for in her marriage. One watches loyalty undercut by personal disappointment. Most importantly, thanks to these performances, you see both of these characters change and evolve, which I did not think was the case on Broadway. Playwrights were more likely to see the importance of forging such complexity in 1998 than I now usually find to be the case, but then the late Uhry ('Driving Miss Daisy') was a masterful and sometimes under-appreciated writer. And he came from Atlanta himself, so he knew the kinds of characters he was writing about here. Like all shows, 'Parade,' which has been seen several times in Chicago since its creation, beginning at the now-defunct Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in 2004, is subject to the precise moment at which it is experienced. When it comes to issues of antisemitism, the world has changed drastically even since the Broadway revival opened in March 2023. The themes of 'Parade,' have, to say the least, intensified. Saying shows feel newly relevant now is a cliche best avoided in theater reviews, unless unavoidable. (As here). But I think Arden's direction has changed, too. On Broadway, the just post-COVID-19 revival felt nervous of causing offense and ended up pandering in places to those easy, stereotypical views of the South. The scrunched design is the same and I still have my issues there. But this time, everything about the show is far subtler, more balanced and far richer in nuance. Although it sounds counterintuitive, that actually means its revelations of the consequences of fear of the other are all the more impactful, all the more devastating. Rodgers and Hammerstein understood this years ago. Brown and Uhry, too. One last note. Major tours like this of serious, analog musicals emphasizing lyric singing and potent characterizations are being squeezed by jukebox shows, digital spectacles, 90-minute kiddie pop and those that feature branded, music industry names. The road is far tougher post-COVID-19. If you support the idea of these pieces in Chicago, it behoves you to go and see the rewards for yourself. Two weeks only. Review: 'Parade' (4 stars) When: Through Aug. 17 Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes Tickets: $35-$125 at 312-977-1700 and
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Final 2025 Tony eligibility rulings: Jinkx Monsoon, Jeb Brown, and Bernadette Peters will compete as featured players
The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for the fourth and final time this season to determine the eligibility status of 12 Broadway productions ahead of the 2025 Tony Awards nominations on Thursday. In addition to confirming the status of several writers, some hotly competitive performers are swapping acting categories. The productions discussed today were: Good Night, and Good Luck; Boop! The Musical; The Last Five Years; Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends; Smash; John Proctor Is a Villain; Floyd Collins; Stranger Things: The First Shadow; Pirates! The Penzance Musical; Just in Time; Real Women Have Curves: The Musical; and Dead Outlaw. More from GoldDerby Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' Allison Janney enters Emmy race as a supporting actress for 'The Diplomat' (exclusive) 'The Last of Us' stars Pedro Pascal, Isabela Merced are rising in the latest Emmy odds The committee made the following determinations on all requests eligible for consideration: Heather Gilbert (lighting design) and David Bengali (projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Lighting Design of a Play category for their work on Good Night, and Good Luck. Jasmine Amy Rogers will be considered eligible in the Best Lead Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Boop! The Musical. David Rockwell (scenic design) and Finn Ross (projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Musical category for their work on BOOP! The Musical. The Last Five Years will be considered eligible in the Best Revival of a Musical category. Jason Robert Brown (book/composer/lyricist) will be considered jointly eligible along with the producers in the category. Jason Robert Brown (book/composer/lyricist) will be considered eligible in the Best Orchestrations category for his work on The Last Five Years. Bernadette Peters will be considered eligible in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Lea Salonga will be considered eligible in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Matt Kinley (scenic design) and George Reeve (projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Musical category for their work on Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Robyn Hurder will be considered eligible in the Best Lead Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Smash. Beowulf Boritt (scenic design) and S. Katy Tucker (video and projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Musical category for their work on Smash. John Proctor Is the Villain will be considered eligible in the Best Play category. Natasha Katz (lighting design) and Hannah Wasileski (projection design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Lighting Design of a Play category for their work on John Proctor Is the Villain. Floyd Collins will be considered eligible in the Best Revival of a Musical category. Tina Landau (book/additional lyrics) and Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) will be considered jointly eligible along with the producers in the category. Jeremy Jordan will be considered eligible in the Best Lead Actor in a Musical category for his performance in Floyd Collins. Scott Zielinski (lighting) and Ruey Horng Sun (projections) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Lighting Design of a Musical category for their work on Floyd Collins. Louis McCartney will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play category for his performance in Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Miriam Buether (set designer) and 59 (video and visual effects designer) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Play category for their work on Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Stephen Daldry (director) and Justin Martin (co-director) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Direction of a Play category for their work on Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Lynne Page (movement director and choreographer) and Coral Messam (additional choreography) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Choreography category for their work on Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Rupert Holmes (adaptation) will be considered eligible in the Best Book of a Musical category for his work on Pirates! The Penzance Musical. Jinkx Monsoon will be considered eligible in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Pirates! The Penzance Musical. Tatianna Córdoba will be considered eligible in the Best Lead Actress in a Musical category for her performance in Real Women Have Curves: The Musical. Arnulfo Maldonado (set design) and Hana S. Kim (video design) will be considered jointly eligible in the Best Scenic Design of a Musical category for their work on Real Women Have Curves: The Musical. Andrew Durand will be considered eligible in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical category for his performance in Dead Outlaw. All other eligibility will be consistent with the opening night credits. Several actors are now competing in categories that run contrary to their opening night billing. RuPaul's Drag Race double winner Jinkx Monsoon moves to the featured actress race for her comedic portrayal of Ruth in Pirates! The Penzance Musical. But her costars Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce will still be duking it out in lead actor. Broadway legends Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga will be joining Monsoon in the featured actress race for their turns in the revue Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Gold Derby had already predicted that these two divas would buck their star billing for a shot at featured: revues are true ensemble-based productions, and the Tony administration hasn't allowed a performer to compete in lead for this type of production since the '90s. The other major acting switcheroo is for Jeb Brown of Dead Outlaw. The entire cast of that critically acclaimed musical is billed below the title. Brown received lead actor nominations from the Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards for the Off-Broadway run, but the Tony Administration chose to only bump up his costar Andrew Durand. Some of Broadway's top writers will also get a shot at a Tony Award for shows they wrote years ago. In 2014, Neil Patrick Harris made a comment in his lead actor acceptance speech for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, lamenting the fact that the show's creators John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask never had the chance to win a Tony Award for the musical. The tuner fell into a rare, but increasingly common, loophole where the revival was its first time being produced on Broadway. The following year, the Tony Awards decided that the writers of any such revivals would be eligible for the top award alongside the producers. This year, that affects musical revivals Floyd Collins and The Last Five Years, both of which have been performed professionally for decades but never on Broadway until now. As such, Tina Landau and Adam Guettel will appear on the ballot for Floyd Collins and Jason Robert Brown will appear on the ballot for The Last Five Years. Best of GoldDerby Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in 'Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends' 'Death Becomes Her' star Jennifer Simard is ready to be a leading lady: 'I don't feel pressure, I feel joy' Click here to read the full article.
