Wrongful accusations, death sentences and lynch mobs are not your typical musical fodder. Yet in "Parade," which opens tomorrow night at the Balch Arena Theater, the rhapsodic tap-dancing townspeople of yore are indeed very much absent.
"Parade," written by Alfred Uhry with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, was a Tony award-winner when it opened in 1998. It now makes its Boston debut as the Department of Drama and Dance's fall production.
The musical is based on the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish, college-educated "Yankee" who finds himself gainfully employed but quite unhappy in 1913 Atlanta. Frank, the superintendent of a pencil factory in Atlanta, is mistakenly arrested for the brutal killing of one of his young employees, 13-year-old Mary Phagan, after police get word that he is the last person to see her alive.
In the wake of the arrest, Frank becomes the victim of media sensationalism and of anti-Semitism that is brewing just beneath the surface in the Jim Crow South. After a trial awash with false testimony and without a definitive burden of proof, Frank is sentenced to hang.
Such a bleak tale hardly seems typical of a theater genre inundated with such exclamatory entries like "Oklahoma!" and "Hello, Dolly!" However, "Parade" director and Drama Department chair Barbara Grossman said that "Musicals have moved to stories with more tragic subjects." In the tradition of opera, Grossman said modern musicals such as this one use song to evoke emotion.
Tufts Junior Julia Arazi, who plays Frank's wife Lucille in the production, cited "Rent" as a classic example of the more didactic and somber subject matter modern musicals are tackling. Arazi said that newer musicals like "Parade" go "against the stereotype of happy, cheesy musicals" and instead employ music to "heighten extreme emotions."
"Parade" also differs from many musicals of the past with its protagonist's relationship to his surroundings. George Rausch, a senior playing the role of Governor John Slayton, explained that typically the main character of a musical is an outsider who wants to be integrated into another community.
Upon hearing Frank's first song, in which he laments "I want to be back where people look like I do and act like I do," the audience is privy to the fact that Frank is not an archetypal musical protagonist. Usually the outsider wants in, but in "Parade" the outsider wants out and stays only for the financial and marital obligations he has in the South.
Musicals as a genre often deal with transformations, and "Parade" does obey this tenet in its exploration of the relationship between Frank and his wife. While native Georgian Lucille and self-proclaimed Yankee Leo are at first distant and dissimilar, the unfair trial and subsequent events bring the couple closer and teach them how to love and appreciate each other.
The story is striking because the blatant bigotry and jarring events depicted are real. The cast was able to read about their character's actual biographies in preparing for their parts and the script is based on actual recountings and the trial transcript.
Grossman and the designers found "Parade" to be a particularly compelling story in today's political context because it magnifies the close connection between patriotism and bigotry. The tale explores the rapidity with which a group of citizens can devolve into a mob. Further, it warns, as Grossman says, against the "pageantry" referenced in the musical's title that can mar truth and justice.
The production's music, set design, and costumes create an impressively complete feeling of the South during 1913. Ubiquitous violins, real screen doors and detail-oriented period costuming contribute to a cohesive presentation of Atlanta during this era.
The tap shoes of older musicals have been traded in for lace-up boots and a happy ending is distinctly absent. "Parade," however, employs a full pit orchestra and 25 voices to tell an important and poignant tale with a disquieting emotion that only music can convey.
