Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York – until 4 April 2026
Reviewed by Lauren Fordham
5*****
Parade is a musical first produced in 1998 by Jason Robert Brown, based on a book by Alfred Uhry. It dramatises the case of Leo Frank, a Jewish American factory superintendent living in Marietta, Georgia, who was falsely convicted in 1913 of murdering one of his child workers, 13 year old Mary Phagan, for which he was lynched in 1915. This production has been developed by Black Sheep Theatre Productions, and is directed by Matthew Peter Clare.
The musical opens on Confederate Memorial Day, an era that the residents of Marietta look back on with pride and nostalgia as they reflect on the role of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, in which the southern states seceded from the north in order to preserve slavery, which northern states such as New York (from which Leo Frank hailed) wanted to abolish.
The level of resentment and bitterness that the people of Marietta feel over this war is vehemently portrayed through the lyrics of Parade’s opening number, ‘The Old Red Hills of Home: ‘Let all the blood of the North spill upon them, till they’ve paid for what they’ve wrought.’
The song is first sung from the perspective of a young soldier (Oskar Nuttall) bidding farewell to his girlfriend, Lila, as he goes to war waving the Confederate flag. Nuttall’s youthful demeanour and optimistic, patriotic loyalty to his love and his state is redolent of Gavroche in Les Misérables as he fights amongst the students at the barricades. The proud yet ominous Confederate flag that Nuttall waves evokes images of swathes of swastikas from Nazi-era musicals like Cabaret and The Sound of Music, and it is a sobering irony to note how the same murderous anti-Semitism the Nazis espoused was happening in the US (and the world) well before Hitler gained power, this is especially ironic because the US likes to share credit for deposing him and would probably rather attention not to be paid to their own glass house, as it were.
Nuttall elaborates on that impish endearing persona when he switches roles to play Frankie Epps, the adolescent would-be suitor of young Mary Phagan, whom he wants to take to ‘The Picture Show’. But he also has a darker side which is seen when he is the mob member to actually lynch Frank at the end of the play, intoning, ‘This is for Mary.’ In that way, he evokes more of a Javert-esque personality as his profound anti-Semitism blinds him to the idea that Frank could be innocent, so I do think he would suit a role such as Javert in later years.
Phagan, played by Eloise Shneck, is unfazed by Epps’ attempts to charm her and has an endearing bond with her friends Iola Stover (Georgina Burt) Essie (Sophia Razak) and Monteen (Sarah Rudd) which makes the trio’s mourning song at her funeral, ‘It Don’t Make Sense’ and their haunting harmonies all the more poignant.
Dan Poppitt, who plays Leo Frank, takes the audience on a rollercoaster of emotions. At first he is unlikeable, thinking himself morally distanced from and superior to the residents of Georgia, ‘I’m a Yankee with a college education’, saying, ‘these people belong in zoos, it’s like they never joined civilisation.
Frank is portrayed at first as a peevish workaholic who denies wife Lucille’s (Molly Whitehouse) simple request for a picnic, pushing her away even as she publicly defends him in court, saying ‘You Don’t Know This Man.’ ‘You don’t have the right to know a man this wise and good.’
Frank is portrayed as a salacious sex offender in court through the fantasy song ‘The Factory Girls/Come up to My Office’ a song based on Frankie Epps’ lie that ‘Leo ‘looked at her funny’, which prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (Jack Hooper) runs with. In this scene, Frank attempts to bribe and seduce Mary and her friends and this is jarring in its jocularity.
To a post-Me Too audience in which most girls and women have been subject to such catcalling, Frank’s behaviour and intentions are as relevant and resonant as they are ribald, and the poor children are paralysed and powerless. ‘He calls my name, I turn my head. He got no words to say. His eyes get big. My face gets red. And I want to run away.’
But Poppitt’s Leo and Whitehouse’s Lucille are at their best and most sympathetic when they are at their most emotional, for Leo, in the song ‘It’s Hard to Speak My Heart’ where he pleads that ‘I never touched that child, I never raised a hand’. Their spirits and vocals soar in the visceral virtuosic song that is ‘This Is Not Over Yet’, proclaiming ‘you shouldn’t underestimate Lucille and Leo Frank.’ Safe behind the fourth wall, however, I winced at the painfully ironic resonance of the words ‘hope, loud as a mortar,’ in this song given the current US-Israeli war with Iran.
As well as Epps’ lie, Frank’s trial is heavily influenced by Britt Craig, an anti-Semitic journalist who delights in propagating familiar tropes in defamatory articles that vilify Frank and advance Craig’s career: ‘Big news! My career’s been revived, give him fangs, give him horns, check those bug-out creepy eyes.’ Craig is played with skill and Gentile glee by Richard Bayton.
The increasingly angry atmosphere in Marietta that Craig capitalises on is also subtly and subversively expressed and enhanced through Adam Kirkwood’s lighting design. His use of misty red lighting as a backdrop evokes not only the literal Old Red Hills but also acts as a powerful metaphor for the ‘red mist’ of anger, resentment and racism that has arguably descended over their residents’ lives. Ollie Nash’s sound design using drums also creates a portentous sense of foreshadowing.
Although Parade centres an anti-Semitic murder, no piece about prejudice in the Deep South can be separated from racism, as Newt Lee and Jim Conley, black men under suspicion on the case prior to Leo’s conviction (both played by a cynical Reggie Challenor) observe. ‘There’s a black man swinging in every tree but they don’t never pay attention! If a Yankee boy flies, surprise surprise, they gonna pay attention. I can tell you this, as a matter of fact, the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed if a little black girl had gotten attacked.’
Racism and anti-Semitism might be considered both sides of the same coin, and neither should be legal tender.
It’s awkward to say one ‘enjoys’ a musical about such a horrible snapshot of history but I was educated and moved by it, and its themes are painfully still relevant and resonant today.