“Parade” is full of mysteries as it returns to Broadway.
trying to show? What is it trying to say? These are the questions left on this critic’s mind after seeing this musical for a second time—first at New York City Center Encores last year, its production now transferred toJudging by the response of audiences on both occasions, it may be a minority view; there was rousing applause at a recent afternoon matinee, as Tony-winning superstaras Leo Frank and Micaela Diamond as his wife Lucille—who sing both their strangely-written parts very well—endured...
It begins and ends with the sight of a first-shirtless Confederate soldier off to fight in the Civil War—who clearly had an Equinox membership in the 1860’s—leading the company in the rousing pro-Old South song of “The Old Red Hills of Home,” which celebrates not just the ways of the Old South, but their maintenance continuing into the future. His older self is taking part in Marietta’s Confederate Memorial Day Parade in the musical’s present day, an event which meaningfully bookends the show.
Dorsey coerces untrue statements out of the Frank family’s Black maid, Minnie , Jim Conley, the factory’s Black sweeper , and three girls who claimed that Frank behaved inappropriately with them . Much of act two is spent with Lucille and Governor Slaton detangling these falsehoods, and then Leo figuring out he really must love Lucille because she’s been so resolute in her determination to get him out of jail— a relationship trajectory, and late burst of rediscovered love, that feels bizarre.
The musical benefits greatly from hers and other individual lifting presences—when the factory girls begin their mesmerizing, repetitive dirge implicating Frank, Slaton holds up his hand not just to question their lies, but also mercifully for all of us to hush them, and gets a round of applause for doing so.
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