Parade Diverges: the 1998 Broadway and 2007 London Productions and Their Critical Receptions Julie L

Home , Adam Guettel, George Furth, Helen Anker, Jason Robert Brown, Jeanine Tesori, Livent

Florida State University Libraries

Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2008 Parade Diverges: The 1998 Broadway and 2007 London Productions and Their Critical Receptions Julie L. Haverkate

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE & DANCE

PARADE DIVERGES:

THE 1998 BROADWAY AND 2007 LONDON PRODUCTIONS AND THEIR CRITICAL

RECEPTIONS

JULIE L. HAVERKATE

A Thesis submitted the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008

______Natalya Baldyga Professor Directing Thesis

______Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member

______Tom Ossowski Committee Member

______Fred Chappel Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Much of thesis would not have been possible without the support of Jason Robert Brown. For his infinite patience with my constant barrage of emails and questions, his willingness to meet with me, and his candid discussion of his own work, I offer my warmest and most sincere thanks. Beyond even that, and most importantly, I genuinely thank him for his continuing contributions to the art form for which we both feel so passionately.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………....v

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1. PARADE ON BROADWAY ...... 16

2. THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE BROADWAY PRODUCTION...... 33

3. PARADE IN LONDON ...... 45

4. THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE LONDON PRODUCTION…………………………62

EPILOGUE...... 78

APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………81

REFERENCES ...... 82

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………….89

iv ABSTRACT

During the 1990s, a sudden outpouring of new musical talent flooded both Broadway and off-Broadway. Dubbed at the time by both critics and scholars as creating New Theater Music, these challenging composers were and continue to be drawn to atypical and less outwardly joyful material and possess affinities for atonal chords and complex harmonies, placing them more in the company of Sondheim than of Schwartz. This group includes such artists as Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, and Jeanine Tesori, and when Parade premiered on Broadway in 1998, its composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown was listed among the impressive group of up-and- comers thought to be continuing the trajectory of the American musical in the Sondheimian vein of darker, challenging, and more operatic works. Using Parade as a case study of these New Voices, this thesis explores this particular musical in both production and in critical reception. The purpose of the production analyses of both the Broadway and London premieres is to demonstrate specifically how this musical has (or has not) worked onstage to engage audiences both intellectually and emotionally, as well as its potential to do so in the future. The analyses of the critical receptions that follow then work to further demonstrate how Parade, and these two specific productions, worked (in)effectively to engage audiences, as well as to reveal any gaps, biases, and strengths in the critical analysis itself: elements critics largely focus on or disregard, the language with which they discuss elements of both the musical and its productions, and their distinctions between the productions and the musical itself. Critics shape the way audiences receive musicals through their written opinions, whether they desire to do so or not, and so to better understand the critic is to better understand the review is to better understand the production is to better understand the basic musical form. Parade, an amalgamation of traditional and newer techniques and topics, is ideal for a case study of critical and musical analysis. Critical analyses of its Broadway and London premiere productions provide the perfect opportunity to discover how this musical works to engage audiences, how critical receptions alter over years and miles, and how both production choices and critical reviews affect and aid the continuing trajectory of the American musical.

INTRODUCTION

Preface: Who Doesn’t Love a Parade?

An extreme injustice occurs: a man is abruptly awakened in the pitch of night and roughly dragged to an isolated area. A formidable group of men hovers menacingly, anxious, yet sure of its duty. “We’re here to carry out the law”: quietly, matter-of-factly, a man steps forward from the shadows. Then, just as quickly and resolutely as the declaration of “guilty” is voiced from a jury of his peers, Leo Frank’s life is blotted out, his body swinging violently from a rope as harsh chimes sound, echoing the wrong that has been done. In 1915, an Atlanta jury found Leo Frank, a Jew, guilty of the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan. In 1998, when Parade, a musicalization of the Frank case, premiered on Broadway, I was unaware of this new show, but intrigued by other musicals at the time that were rocking Broadway with their “strange” sounds and “controversial” subject matters – musicals such as Rent, Side Show, and Titanic. It was not until the following summer that I was introduced to Parade via the lead character’s musical declaration, “This Is Not Over Yet,” as performed by Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello (Leo and Lucille Frank respectively) on the 1999 Tony Awards. I thought, “Hey, that’s kind of pretty,” and so I bought the original Broadway cast recording, thereby inciting my incessant curiosity about Jason Robert Brown’s musical work and the notorious Leo Frank case. Eight years have passed since Parade’s premiere on Broadway, and my fascination with the musical and its historical subject has grown over that time. In the summer of 2000, I saw Parade’s national touring production, which Brown himself music directed. As I sat fifth row center at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, I looked on an embittered and pained Southern people, and became enveloped by the sounds of the newly industrialized South that were ironically juxtaposed with the lively and patriotic Dixie tunes so popular at the turn of twentieth century America. I was fascinated by the pastiche score that interweaves a variety of rock, gospel, blues, hymnal, and pop, while simultaneously I was confronted head-on by America’s prejudiced past. I sympathized with and grieved for the Franks, knowing full well that Parade’s purpose extended beyond that of a period piece framed by a love story: the musical was commenting on racial prejudice, male obsession with female purity, and media frenzies that result in witch hunts – all of which continue to exist in America to this day. Yet something in the production seemed lacking to me, even then. I felt as though I was watching “The Picture Show” that Frankie so earnestly wishes little Mary Phagan to accompany him to in the musical. Something onstage was causing me to feel as though I was outside of the action, simply observing history. Still, I recognized the import and potential of Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s work within the art form. In my research I was startled, but not altogether surprised, to discover that most critics did not react to Parade (the musical, not the production) in the way that I did. They generally found the musical too somber, Brown’s music either “too pretty” for the disturbing topic or not pretty enough in its efficiency, and the topic itself if not altogether inappropriate for a musical, not treated in a proper manner for such a complex issue. As I read through the reviews – all the New York reviews and some from the national tour as well – I became frustrated by many of the criticisms. The critics possessed ideas of what the musical is – how it generally looks, sounds,

feels – and because Parade’s premiere production did not appear to fit their definition, they primarily labeled the musical itself ambitious but ineffective, or sometimes just plain bad. One of the most interesting critiques to me was that Parade is unpleasurable or unenjoyable, and I noticed that Brown was in the company of many other new composers whose challenging works were often viewed similarly and negatively through this lens of pleasure. The purpose of this thesis is threefold. I will analyze Parade’s two major productions, demonstrating the ways in which this seemingly difficult musical can work to engage audiences in multiple ways. I will follow these production analyses with analyses of their critical receptions. In doing so, I will generally be addressing what I see as a lack in serious criticism of musical theatre. More specifically, my analyses of the two radically different directorial approaches to Parade will demonstrate that the potential of this musical and others like it has not yet been fully explored. In addition, examining the critical receptions of these productions (both what the critics recognized and understood, as well as what they overlooked and misinterpreted) may allow an appreciation for the exciting potential of Parade in particular, as well as other similar musical works.

The Silent Man in the Tower: The History of Leo Frank1

When analyzing the productions and critical receptions of a musical such as Parade, based on the actual case of Leo Frank that occurred in Atlanta in 1913-1915, it is important to be familiar with the history itself. Indeed, it is vital in the case of Parade, as many critics call its creators to account for their portrayals of certain characters and events, their selections and deletions of specific issues or material, as well as their manner of framing and telling the story. The Leo Frank case is extremely significant in the trajectory of America’s history, and while many critics were aware (in the general sense) of the historical facts surrounding the case, many others were not, and this will account for their responses to Alfred Uhry’s book in particular, as well as their general reactions to the case itself. Born in 1884, Leo Frank, a Jew, was raised in New York where he received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University. In 1908, Frank moved to Atlanta, Georgia to take the position of supervisor at the National Pencil Factory. An active and respected member of the Jewish community, Frank was considered responsible and thoughtful, if somewhat rigid and anxious, by friends and business associates alike. One Atlanta native, Lucille Selig, saw past Frank’s severity, however, declaring, “If there are such things as cases of ‘love at first sight,’ Leo Frank’s love for me and my love for Leo Frank is a case in indisputable point,” and the couple was soon engaged – a mere ten months after Frank’s arrival down South.2 In 1913, just five years following his relocation, Frank was accused of the murder of Mary Phagan. The thirteen-year-old worked in the factory supervised by Frank, inserting rubber erasers into the metal tips of pencils for ten cents per hour. Her broken and bloodied body (and though unsubstantiated, many would argue sexually violated) was discovered by Newt Lee, the factory’s night watchman, in the factory’s basement on the morning of April 27. While police

1 The general public and Atlanta newspapers of the time referred to Frank as “The Silent Man in the Tower” because during the trial he was kept by himself in a tower of the Fulton County Jail and he refused to speak to reporters about the case.

2 Qtd. in Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank (New York: Random House, 2003) 82.

officials initially suspected the African American Lee of the crime, suspicion soon fell on the Northern, educated Frank primarily due to what many considered his overly anxious behavior during the investigation, as well as a few odd deviations from his habitual activities that day. These oddities alone would not have been enough to convict Frank, but suspicions were fueled by Jim Conley, a factory sweeper, who claimed to have assisted Frank by removing Mary’s body to the basement. The African American Conley simultaneously attacked Frank’s reputation by claiming that he periodically would watch Frank’s office door while the factory supervisor “entertained” various female visitors. Conley’s implication of Frank’s sexual perversion (that he was not “built” like other men and that at times multiple women were “entertained” in the office) and consequently other factory girls’ similarly salacious and unfounded testimonies ultimately led to Frank’s conviction. Because of the corrupt tactics of the police, as well as the improper handling of the trial, Georgia’s governor commuted Frank’s death sentence to life in prison. By that time, however, the majority of Atlanta (including the press, which sensationalized the case) was fiercely against Frank, and the governor’s bold decision caused an angry mob to abduct Frank from his cell on the night of August 17, 1915 and lynch him. Though there exists overwhelming evidence that he was in fact innocent, the state of Georgia has not, to this day, officially pardoned Leo Frank. As the facts demonstrate, the Leo Frank case is a hotbed for discussion about national politics and race relations both historical and contemporary. Because the subject is so ripe for exploration, it is not surprising that Parade was not the first fictionalized account of this notorious case. Some adaptations have significantly altered the facts for other purposes, such as pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Michaeux’s 1935 film, Murder in Harlem, which follows the framing of a black man for the rape and murder of a white woman in order to draw focus on the oppression of and racist attitudes towards African Americans. Others represent more personal views of the case as demonstrated by Mervyn LeRoy’s 1937 film, They Won’t Forget, which is based on the novel Death in the Deep South by Ward Green, a reporter who covered Frank’s trial for The Atlanta Journal. Some largely stay true to the case, such as Richard Kugler’s 1977 novel, Members of the Tribe, which, in its only major alteration relocates the story to Savannah, or the 1988 Emmy award-winning miniseries, The Murder of Mary Phagan starring Peter Gallagher as Frank with a supporting cast including Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, and William H. Macy. Others stray into tangential stories or use the Frank case as a kind of framing device, as does Julie Ellis’s 1980 novel, The Hampton Women, which follows the fictional Elizabeth Hampton in her passionate aid of Frank’s defense effort, or Ishmael Reed’s 2000 novel, a satire in which Frank only exists within a play at Mary Phagan College. One adaptation, playwright David Mamet’s 2002 novel, The Old Religion, offers a kind of philosophical exercise in its meandering depiction of Frank’s terse stream-of-consciousness rather than focusing on the events of the case itself. The sheer abundance of adaptations throughout the course of the twentieth century reveals the topicality of the case and its tremendous potential to grip audiences today. Despite this expansive history of adaptations, no one adaptation has been so critically assailed in its methods of fictionalizing the case as Parade, which I believe is partially due to its musical form – not solely its slimming of details or exaggeration of characters (which occur in these other fictionalized tellings as well). In their musicalized account of Frank’s story, bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer- lyricist Jason Robert Brown took pains to remain true to both the people and the society that they portray in the musical. Besides the few alterations to facts and characterizations that I will discuss in later chapters, Parade’s only major deviation from history is its depiction of Leo and

Lucille’s relationship. The musical’s portrayal of the couple implies that the Franks suffered from an arranged marriage (they did not), becoming a loving couple only gradually throughout the course of the trial, as though the atrocity of the case is what brought them emotionally together. As this view of the relationship is what all three creators maintain as the arc of the musical, as well as Leo’s character arc (from rigid and meticulous to warm and affectionate), its effects on the musical’s overall significance and effectiveness will be discussed at length throughout the upcoming chapters. Beyond the portrayal of the Frank’s relationship, Parade attempts to evoke a vast array of historical figures and complex issues. It is therefore valuable to be acquainted with the people and the precise events as they occurred in Atlanta between the years 1913-1915 for two reasons: first, because depending on the directorial approach taken with Parade, factual detail may be enormously important to the understanding of how the musical operates, and secondly, because critics often find problems (whether justified or not) with the representation of this history. Brown and Uhry mainly utilized two books in their research of the case: Charles and Louise Samuels’s Night Fell on Georgia and Harry Golden’s A Little Girl Is Dead. In addition, Steve Oney’s And the Dead Shall Rise is an exemplary source for information on the case.3 These works reveal that little evidence existed against Frank, and to this day, one will be hard pressed to find a historian who does not believe in his innocence despite some of the ambiguities of the case. Frank’s conviction was an anomaly, for the case represented the first instance in which a white man (albeit Jewish) was convicted based solely on an African American’s testimony. To understand how this happened, one must be aware of the numerous political and racial issues occurring in the Southern United States at this time. The vast majority of Parade takes place fifty years after the American Civil War occurred, and Southerners at this time were fiercely resisting the change from an agrarian society to one of industrialization and urbanization.4 They blamed Jews for this abhorred transformation of their beloved South – in short, Jews were held responsible for the beginnings of a “modern” society. From the 1870s through the beginning of the twentieth century, economic distress in the South resulted in a burgeoning anti-Semitism: the rise of the KKK, the birth of Populism, Frank’s lynching, and more. Little information exists on Southern Jews at this time,5 but the

3 Bertie Carvel, interview with Tom Atkins, “20 Questions with … Bertie Carvel,” What’s On Stage.com 15 Oct. 2007, 25 Oct. 2007 . While written in 2003 – five years following Parade’s Broadway premiere – Oney’s historical tome was most likely utilized by the entire cast of the London production, for which Oney wrote the program notes, and Bertie Carvel (who played Leo Frank) designated Oney’s work “a very objective, very full account.” There are, of course, dozens of other books written on the case, but these are the three most closely connected to the musical, and Oney’s appears the most exhaustive and accurate of all of the sources I have come across.

4 See Leonard Dinnerstein, “Atlanta in the Progressive Era: A Dreyfus Affair in Georgia,” Jews in the South, ed. Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1973) 170-197.

5 See Eric L. Goldstein, “‘Now is the Time to Show Your True Colors’: Southern Jews, Whiteness, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, ed. Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006) 134-55.

writings that are available suggest that Jews attempted complete assimilation, even to the point of suppressing their “Jewishness” if necessary.6 Because of the drastic changes that occurred simultaneously with the appearance of Jews in the South, Frank symbolized the transformation of the white Southerners’ beloved mythic South into the modernized, urban society that they despised. A less popular but equally valid theory for the railroading of the Jewish Frank is that the case would never have evoked such an outrage without changes in female behavior that were also occurring at this time. Issues of sexuality and power then become the main triggers for the case against Frank, because white Southern men refused to accept the working woman’s increasing contribution to the family income, while society still insisted on her chastity and virtue.7 Another major shift occurring at this time was the relationship between African Americans and Jews. Before the Civil War, the only group of people to be coupled with African Americans as second-class citizens was the Jews, and as such the two groups supported each other in their equal fights against prejudice. As Jews began to rise in society due to their assertion of themselves as keen businessmen, African Americans looked to them as models of how to achieve financial success and assimilation.8 This sympathetic, supportive relationship between Jews and African Americans began deteriorating after the Civil War, as the Jews’ focus on assimilation did not allow for a friendly association with the former slaves. African Americans began resenting this treatment, and this largely buried bitterness came to a head during the Leo Frank case. No longer did the groups aid one another in a mutual fight; instead, they fought against each other. Jews unconditionally supported Frank in his innocence, while African Americans rallied around Jim Conley. Both groups recognized that a defeat in the case would not simply affect the future of one man, but of an entire group of people, thereby potentially resulting in a fatal hindrance to one people’s acceptance into American society. Beyond its topical societal commentary based in historical fact, Parade represented a trend in the ’90s of similarly topically and musically challenging, mostly sung-through musicals premiering in New York. While the form had boasted other serious-minded and factually driven musicals before, Parade’s tone, musical structure, and production techniques seemed to distance

6 See Abraham J. Peck, “’Peculiar Institution’: Jews and Judaism in the Nineteenth Century South,” Modern Judaism 7 (1987): 94-114. Jews first entered Southern society during the period of the mythical South which envisioned itself as aristocratic due to the supremacy of its plantation owners. Jews too pursued the aristocratic myth that the plantation owners put forth, going so far as to claim noble heritage in hopes to be accepted among their gentile peers. Even as late as 1879, Jewish newspapers declared that the South continued to possess a “higher state of civilization” and that Southern Jews by association were “gentlemen not only by gentlemanly attributes but by inheritance” as well (102).

7 Nancy MacLean, “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism,” The Journal of American History 78 (1991): 947. This argument will be explored further in chapter four in reference to the London production.

8 See Philip S. Foner, “Black-Jewish Relations in the Opening Years of the Twentieth Century,” Phylon 36 (1975): 359-367. See also Eugene Levy, “’Is the Jew a White Man?’: Press Reaction to the Leo Frank Case, 1913-1915,” Phylon 35 (1974): 212-222. See also Clive Webb, “A Tangled Web: Black- Jewish Relations in the Twentieth-Century South,” Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History. Ed. Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. 192-209.

and confuse some critics and audiences upon its Broadway premiere. It was not until nearly nine years later that a production would occur that effectively and engagingly handled the history and form of Parade in a way that garnered critical acclaim.

Musical Theatre’s New Voices

On February 28, 1999 when Parade closed after only eighty-five performances, no one seemed entirely surprised. With decidedly mixed reviews and having garnered only a few of the many awards anticipated by its creators, Parade was officially labeled a flop: the primary reason given was the declaration of bankruptcy of Livent, its production company.9 Disregarding its financial woes, however, most agreed that the show, although highly ambitious in its scope and subject, ultimately failed as an attempt to reinvigorate the musical as a simultaneously serious and pleasurable art form. Yet Parade possessed all of the key ingredients for success in the form of its creative team: Harold Prince (co-conception and direction), Alfred Uhry (book), and Jason Robert Brown (music/lyrics). In a Broadway season that consisted mainly of musical revivals (Peter Pan; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; Annie Get Your Gun) and movie-musicals- turned-stage-musicals (Footloose), Parade’s novelty as an original musical by a distinguished creative team should have drawn curious audiences at least. But the season’s sole other original musical contribution, The Civil War, garnered scathing reviews, and Parade lost the Best New Musical Tony Award to Fosse (a dance revue), indicating that original book musicals were not only scarce at this time, but possibly also that they were not the preferred musical format. While I never questioned the act of musicalizing a real life tragedy such as the Leo Frank case, nor wondered at the consequences of structuring the musical as a kind of American opera – sung- through and serious-minded – I soon discovered that many critics and musical scholars did. Upon Parade’s Broadway premiere late in 1998, Jason Robert Brown was considered one of a group of hot, young composers who emerged in the ’90s and was dubbed to be writing what many critics referred to as New Theater Music.10 The up-and-coming group of artists (that I will refer to as musical theatre’s “New Voices”) producing this new theatre music included Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, The Light in the Piazza), Michael John LaChiusa (Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party), and Jeanine Tesori (Violet; Caroline, or Change), among a few others. While not all their works were as dark in tone and subject as Parade, because of their complex music (compounded by intriguing subject matters) critics agreed that they could not be considered conventional. Only three of these works preceded Parade’s Broadway debut, and each premiered Off-Broadway: LaChiusa’s operatic Hello Again (1994), adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, follows ten nameless characters who sexually couple with each other alternately in scenes of pleasure and despair; Guettel’s Floyd Collins (1996), a bluegrass- infused tale based on the true story of a man in 1925 who became trapped and eventually died in a Kentucky cave; and Tesori’s country music-styled Violet (1997) which concerned an embittered, young disfigured girl’s journey of growth and healing.

9 Eric Grode, “Parade Marches On,” Show Music 16.2 (Summer 2000): 37.

10 For reference to this designation, see: David Finkle, “Hey Kids, the Musical Ain’t Quite Dead Yet,” Village Voice 11 Jan. 2000: 64. See also David Patrick Stearns, “Voices of the Future Young Theater Composers Shine,” USA Today, final ed: 20 Nov. 1998: 7E. John Bush Jones also refers to this new group musical creators emerging in the ’90s in Our Musicals, Ourselves, in the chapter entitled “New Voices, New Perspectives.”

As theatre and classical music critic David Patrick Stearns points out, in all these new works, “neither melodies nor harmonies follow the usual formulas, but seem to go where the drama takes them.”11 While he goes on to label Brown as “the most traditional of the bunch,” Stearns maintains that these composers cannot help but be controversial due to their highly individualized voices which cause them to break with traditional theatre music in their readiness to modulate freely between different keys as demanded by their characters and stories. “Human truths in the 1990s,” Stearns muses, “are just too complicated for the harmonic stability of Rodgers and Hammerstein.” Stearns seems impressed by the complexity of these new artists’ works, but the generally mixed critical reception and lack of scholarly attention to these musicals raises questions as to how they work onstage and in what matter and ways they attempt to engage audiences. I would ultimately like to explore these questions specifically through analysis of the major productions and critical receptions of Parade, focusing on how specific production choices highlight and/or hinder this musical’s chosen storytelling methods as determined greatly by its complex musical score. Jason Robert Brown and the other new composers’ attraction to difficult, less outwardly joyful subjects, and their affinities for atonal chords and compound harmonies, have placed them more in the company of Sondheim than of Schwartz. Nearly forty years after Company’s Broadway premiere in 1970 – and with no less than one Broadway revival per decade – few would dispute Sondheim’s contribution to the form. Yet Walter Kerr was of a mixed mind regarding Company’s premiere production: Ask me if I liked the show. I didn’t like the show. I admired it, or admired vast portions of it, but that is another matter. Admiration stirs in the head; liking sends out signals somewhere lower in the anatomy . . . I left Company feeling rather cool and queasy, whatever splendors my head may have been reminding me of. 12 This idea of emotional engagement of the spectator is a significant topic that I will discuss further in future chapters, specifically in relation to the employment of the Franks’ relationship and the role of music in Parade. Additionally, Brown’s score for Parade is also similar to most of Sondheim’s scores in its employment of complex musical styles and structures to relay a difficult subject. It is no coincidence then that more than one of these New Voices (including Brown) has been compared to that complex and highly esteemed composer who most critics appeared to need some time to warm up to. Also like Sondheim’s musicals, the works of these new composers tend to be sung- through, as well as showcase a full range of voices from legit to belt. Because they frequently utilize recitative, they are often interpreted as negatively blurring the lines between the high art of opera and the popular entertainment of the musical. Before this ambitious group invaded Broadway and Off-Broadway (mostly the latter), the majority of sung-through works (besides those by Sondheim and a few others) were the enormously popular European imports (so often referred to as “megamusicals” for the significance that they placed on spectacle and technology to tell their stories) made popular by the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the team of Claude- Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil (Les Misérables, Miss Saigon). While these megamusicals

11 Stearns, “Voices of the Future” 7E.

12 Walter Kerr, “Company: Original and Uncompromising,” rev. of Company by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, The Sunday Times 3 May 1970, rpt. in New York Critics’ Reviews 31 (1970): 263. It is interesting to note that Harold Prince (director of Parade’s Broadway premiere) directed this premiere of Company.

often employ serious topics such as the French Revolution, they consist of repetitive, infectious melodies and generally lighter tones, or at the very least, optimistic endings. The New Voices challenge this formulaic and inherently emotional musical structure, while still employing and building from many of its traditions. Their musical experimentation does not come from dislike for the conventional integrated form, nor with the sole intent of innovation, rather they attempt to create styles and structures that most compliment the stories they prefer to tell. As Michael John LaChiusa asserts, “The characters, dramatic plots, and settings that I choose to write just don’t go along with that [Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition]. In Marie Christine, I’m writing the story of Medea (who killed her own children). I’m not doing anything normal.”13 If these new artists were not creating what they deem “normal” musical theatre, many questions then arise: 1) How and why are/were critics (and scholars) defining the American musical and what do they consider “normal” within the form? 2) Were the directorial approaches utilized in productions supporting these musicals’ structures and stories, or were they attempting to force unsuitable concepts onto these works that hindered their musical effectiveness? 3) How were both critics and production concepts affecting, positively or negatively, the audience reception of these musicals? While I intend to touch on the first of these issues, this thesis will primarily respond to the last two questions. In order to better understand current trends in the critical reception of musical theatre, I will offer my own analysis of both of the New York and London premieres of Parade, and then present close readings of their respective critical reviews. The latter will offer analysis other than my own, thereby providing multiple perspectives on how Parade works (or does not work) onstage, as well as any possibly untapped potential as based on critiques of its individual elements. This analysis of criticism is also important as the ways in which critics receive and discuss musicals inform the manner in which spectators, their readers, view musicals. And so, to understand how these theatre experts (at least we like to imagine that critics are experts in the craft they are critiquing) came to interpret Parade as a (un)successful American musical – what they saw, heard, felt, etc. – I will perform two close readings of the show in production. The first involves the original 1998 Broadway production at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the second is the 2007 London premiere at the Donmar Warehouse. Because of the changes made to the script and score – cut songs, additional characters and music, altered scenes, etc. – the thematic focus and character development of Parade has shifted since its original inception, and due to the two dramatically different venues utilized, the staging and atmosphere of the work could not have been more different. Having viewed the Broadway production at the New York Performing Arts Library at the Lincoln Center (as well as the 2000 national touring production) and having actually attended the Donmar production multiple times during its limited run, I possess extensive notes on the productions from which I will draw my analysis.14 I will also be drawing from the published libretto of the original production and the unpublished libretto of the London production. In

13 Qtd. in Stearns, “Voices of the Future” 7E. LaChiusa’s adaptation transplanted the tale to New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. Consequently, many jokingly referred to the musical as “Medea on the Bayou.”

14 The touring production was a duplication of the Broadway production in all respects except for the cast (though some of the original cast members remained) and the trial scene, which was slightly restaged.

addition, I had occasion to speak with Jason Robert Brown in person, and remained in email contact for any further inquiries I had about the productions.15 I will first explore how the two productions functioned differently by utilizing two major criteria, and how I believe one director’s approach was more successful. The first criteria is the productions’ effectiveness in their selected staging methods, as well as their means of engaging audiences and whether they appear to do so in single or multiple ways. The second criteria is the productions’ abilities to assist in character and thematic developments (that are oftentimes only revealed through the musical score). I will then consider the critical reviews of the productions. Looking for common threads within the reviews, I hope to uncover how critics generally interpreted Parade and what their criteria was for judging this particular musical. Where did Parade (not) meet critical expectations – intellectual, emotional, artistic – and in what ways? If, based on the reviews, one appeared to engage critics more successfully than the other, was this due to the altered libretto and score and other significant production choices, or do London and New York critics simply possess different sets of expectations for the musical form? In my critical analysis, I will also be looking to the critics’ reviews of other musicals that debuted within a few years of the two productions so that I may have a better a better indication of a particular critic’s biases, preferences, and expectations in regards to musical theatre. Not only will such multiple analyses enlighten this specific musical’s successes and failures, but they will also point towards the general lens through which the public perceives the musical as an art form – a lens which is generally formulated by the critics, and to a great extent affects the success, both artistic and financial, of a musical.

Musical Theatre Scholarship

Before performing production and critical analyses, it is important to be aware of the current state of musical theatre scholarship, as the general lack of (quality) scholarship informs both critics and musicals alike. While the New Voices of the ’90s were creating musicals that challenged the traditional form, many scholars, critics, and aficionados mourned the passing of what many of them considered to be the “Golden Age” of musical theatre.16 Such typical titles reflecting this sentiment include “Today, the Musical Dies,” The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical, and Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now. These fatalistic views dominated musical publications, each lamenting in the 1990s through the turn of the twenty-first century the “passing” of the traditional musical form.17 Because the musical is rooted in the

15 There are two published librettos of Parade at this time. The first is the Broadway libretto, printed in 2000 in the now defunct musical theatre magazine entitled Show Music. The second, published in Wiley Hausamn’s The New American Musical: An Anthology from the End of the Twentieth Century, records the touring production for which the trial scene was restaged (until the 2007 Donmar production, Brown insisted that this touring libretto was the official one). Warmest thanks to Jason Robert Brown for providing the unpublished libretto of the Donmar production. Since 2008, this altered script/score is the only version accessible for rights from MTI.

16 Generally considered to begin with Oklahoma! (1943), there is some debate as to the ending of the Golden Age. Some believe the era to come to a close with Hammerstein’s death in 1960 (or generally ending with his final musical, The Sound of Music (1959)), while others believe the period extends until the creation of the so-called concept musical with Hair (1968).

17 Albert Innaurato, “Today, the Musical Dies,” The New York Times Magazine 26 Sept. 1999: 27-28.

spirited vaudeville and lively operetta forms, theatre professor and critic John Bush Jones expresses the hope (in his 2003 publication) that the current transition into “socially relevant shows” was just a “passing symptom of their time.”18 As Jones goes on to assert, “No matter how ‘serious’ a work may be, there has almost always been an element of playfulness in music theatre pieces [that is lacking in these new works].”19 Jones’s wish partially came true: now, in 2008, the musical form has indeed reverted back to a lighter, happier, more choreographed format in both New York and London. But the New Voices are quieter these days, and entirely original musical works are rarities, with such musicals having been replaced on the Great White Way and the West End by the trendy movies-turned-stage-musicals and jukebox musicals.20 So what exactly does Jones mean by the term “playful”? What were he and other scholars and critics expecting when they attended a production of Parade? For a general understanding of and attitude towards musical theatre, one need only refer to Stacy Wolf’s manifesto, “In Defense of Pleasure: Musical Theatre History in the Liberal Arts.” In her article, written in conversation with Daniel Savran’s “Toward a Historiography of the Popular,” Wolf highlights the inherent difficulties in studying and researching musical theatre (difficulties which I have partially discussed in regards to critics), such as the “elusiveness” of music for non- musicians. She then proceeds to offer some solutions for teaching musical theatre, such as inviting guests into the classroom to speak about those areas that the professor is not fully equipped to illuminate for the students. While Wolf’s manifesto and Savran’s article both have wonderful intentions, they also, perhaps unconsciously, emphasize stereotypes of musical theatre. This engendering of generalizations begins with Wolf’s title, “In Defense of Pleasure.” The assumption that “pleasure” is one of the key elements of the musical is problematic and runs throughout her

Mark N. Grant, The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical (Boston: Northeastern, 2005). Mark Steyn, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (New York: Routledge, 1999).

18 John Bush Jones, “New Voices, New Perspectives,” Our Musicals, Ourselves (Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis, 2004): 331-58.

19 Jones 354.

20 Paul Hodgins, “Brown Out,” The Orange County Register 4 Jan. 2004, The Official Website of Jason Robert Brown, 8 Jan. 2008 < http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/about/article.php?articleID=101>. At the time this thesis was written, the proliferation of such musicals on Broadway consisted of Billy Elliot, Cry Baby, Hairspray, Legally Blonde, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Xanadu, and Young Frankenstein. If one also incorporates musical movies adapted for the stage, these include: The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Mary Poppins. In London at the time of the Donmar production, adaptations (not already mentioned above) included: Desperately Seeking Susan, Dirty Dancing, and Lord of the Rings (admittedly classic literature before ever becoming film, the popularity of the films is surely what prompted the musical adaptation that condenses all three books/films into one confusing three hour spectacle). Musicals that utilize the music of a single musician or musical group to tell a story (such as Mama Mia! – the ABBA musical – which is currently on Broadway) or employ the group’s music to tell the group’s story (such as the current Jersey Boys) are referred to as jukebox musicals. Due to these current trends in musical theatre, artists like Brown find that "Broadway is an inhospitable place to work. Broadway isn't kind or forgiving to new or smart work . . . I don’t have any aspiration to write the kind of material that’s successful on Broadway right now."

argument. In Savran’s article, he refers to the seemingly inherent “pleasure” of the musical form: “No theatre form is as single-mindedly devoted to producing pleasure, inspiring spectators to tap their feet, sing along, or otherwise be carried away.”21 Wolf seconds this sentiment, encouraging theatre professors to “use pleasure as a way in” and reminding them that “practicing careful listening with one’s ear and one’s heart can facilitate meaning-making.”22 While many musicals can be interpreted through such an emotional and delightful lens, Wolf’s frustration that the musical is rarely seen as part of the intellectual project of theatre departments is confused by her constant emphasis on joyful pleasure.23 There are, of course, innumerable kinds of pleasure. While many do enjoy the merry and diverting kind associated with music that causes one to clap her hands or tap her feet, others receive pleasure resulting from intellectual stimulation, some from predictable (and therefore comfortingly familiar) plots or plots that one can puzzle through and solve on one’s own, while still others appreciate being questioned morally or philosophically. Some find pleasure in the ability to relate to characters, others when witnessing formal innovation, and still others appreciate aesthetics above all else. Associating the musical form so strongly with one type of pleasure (the joyful, foot-tapping, or sentimental kind), can lead to difficulties in the analysis of works such as Parade, which may produce that conventional kind of pleasure at certain moments (specifically through ballads and highly theatricalized/fantastical numbers) but may allow for additional types of pleasure as well through their complicated harmonics and challenging subject matters. Despite Wolf and Savran’s well-intentioned efforts, there remains little scholarship on musical theatre as an art form. Very few journal articles are written on works created by artists other than Stephen Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the majority of books simply generalize the musical’s history by anthologizing the most popular shows. Musicologist Raymond Knapp’s works are particularly helpful for understanding how music works within a variety of musicals, but like music historian Geoffrey Block, he focuses more on the classics and Sondheim’s musicals.24 At the time this thesis was written, none of the scores to any of the New Voices’ works had yet been analyzed – with the one major exception being (conveniently for me) Parade. The purpose of Adam Roberts’s thesis entitled “An Analysis of Musical Narrative and Signification in Jason Robert Brown’s Score for Parade” is to “examine musical signification, symbolism, metaphor, and allegory in Parade’s music via a narratological reading.”25 His thesis is by no means exhaustive of the entire musical score, but it is indeed enlightening as to the thematic complexities and character motifs that Brown has interwoven throughout the music. As I am not a musician, I relied heavily on Roberts’s own expert analysis, and consequently referred to his

21 David Savran, “Toward a Historiography of the Popular,” Theatre Survey 45.2 (Nov. 2004): 216.

22 Stacy Wolf, “In Defense of Pleasure: Musical Theatre History in the Liberal Arts [A Manifesto],” Theater Topics 17.1 (Mar. 2007): 55, 53.

23 Stacy Wolf 52.

24 See Block’s Enchanted Evenings: the Broadway musical from "Show Boat" to Sondheim (1997).

25 Adam Roberts, An Analysis of Musical Narrative and Signification In Jason Robert Brown’s Score For Parade, thesis, The Florida State University, 2005 (Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI, 2006) 2.

conclusions whenever the critical reviews brought the effectiveness of the score into question. Besides Roberts’s thesis, only two other works focus for any length on Parade. The more significant is Donald Elgan Whittaker III’s theatre dissertation entitled “Subversive Aspects of American Musical Theatre.” Whittaker’s chapter on “Jews on the American Musical Stage,” contains both a thematic and musical analysis of Leo’s Jewishness as represented in the musical, and presents his otherness as a Southern Jew as equal to the Southerners’ otherness as viewed by Northerners. Whittaker convincingly demonstrates the subversive nature of Brown’s music and Uhry’s book by highlighting the work’s cyclical structure and subtle inclusion of many historic and societal details that factored into the case. In his writing, Whittaker exposes the only other significant analysis of Parade, Jeffrey Melnick’s “Leo Frank, the Musical,” as a rather spiteful and oftentimes highly inaccurate criticism of the musical.26 Despite his mainly (and somewhat flawed) historical analysis of the Frank case as presented in the musical, Melnick’s lack of insight into the work’s musical complexities is surprising considering that he is also an editor for the Journal of Popular Music Studies. Such is the case with much musical theatre analysis: scholars tend to focus on one element. By disregarding the other elements of form and production, they fail to account for the fact that the meaning of any musical is dependent on all of its elements working together. In addition to the more valuable sources listed above, a few more recent chronologies mention Parade in passing, but nothing else of significance has been written on any aspect of this particular musical. As with most musicals, one must look mostly to reviews and interviews to obtain any kind of analysis or insight: musical theatre scholarship is simply limited – both in number of sources and in the quality of those sources.27 This thesis is meant to address these limitations by attempting a thorough analysis of a musical, Parade, and all its elements as presented on the page, on the stage, and in its critical reviews.

Everybody’s a Critic

Criticism is a talent – just like acting, directing, designing, and playwriting. It may sound unfashionable in this era of exploded universal assumptions, but some people are actually more perceptive watchers of plays than others. They see more in theater works than others do, and their creative fulfillment is in communicating their insights persuasively to others . . . Either one is a critic or one isn’t. – Critic Jonathan Kalb28

26 Jeffrey Melnick, Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South (Jackson, M.S.: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).

27 See William A. Everett, The Musical: A Research and Information Guide (New York: Routledge, 2004). A complete annotated bibliography of musical sources. That Mr. Everett can include all available sources in just over 200 pages, including those on Yiddish and Spanish musical theatre, operetta, minstrelsy, revue, and film musicals, is astounding.

28 Jonathan Kalb, “The Death (and Life) of American Theater Criticism: Advice to the Young Critic,” Theater 33.1 (Winter 2003): 44-57.

There is an intimate triangular relationship between the practitioner, the spectator, and the critic which by now is almost symbiotic . . . What happens to a Broadway play if it fails to find favor with the reviewer for The New York Times? And what happens to the royalties of the playwright, the reputation of the director, the opportunities of the designers, the investments of the producers, the future employment of the actors? – Critic Robert Brustein29

To better understand a critical review and what it offers the reader, one must first have a clear idea of criticism itself. It is important to be aware of both its role in the theater and in assisting spectators, as well as the restrictions placed on theatrical criticism by publishers. It is shocking to discover just how little room these publications give their critics to fully expound on the (de)merits of any single production, and of course, each publication possesses a distinctive style, as well as a specific readership that it writes for. In the larger New York publications known for theatrical criticism – The New York Times, The Village Voice, Variety – the reviews generally run an adequate 1500-2000 words, while their British counterparts – The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph – typically run reviews of only 500-800 words. After providing the obligatory plot summary, critics barely have room to highlight especially fine performances, let alone discuss qualities of the score, choreography, design, and direction, and how each of these elements (ideally) work together to produce a single concept. Knowing this, the one or two aspects that each individual critic chooses to discuss within his or her limited space – whether character representation/development, staging, tone, themes, musical style, etc. – is extraordinarily significant. Add to this the reality that many papers still enforce overnight reviews, and what one is faced with is an extremely limited, and therefore highly selective, idea of the reviewed musical that is based on time constraints and limited space. The selected elements in a review reveals what the critic deems most important within the production, as well as the most problematic and effective elements of the show. The selection and omission of discussed elements of production also reveals potential gaps within a critic’s knowledge and understanding of the musical form. This is often most apparent in regards to the music and choreography and how each of these elements integrally adds to the meaning and tone of the musical. Perhaps one of the greatest problems in popular criticism of musicals is that theatre critics review them. While some have backgrounds in music and dance in addition to their training and knowledge of theatre, many do not. Because most theatre critics are not trained in dance and music, many tend to discuss these elements in generic terms. Or, even more problematically, perhaps because they do not deem these elements as significant as they of course are, they tend to privilege the book and the lyrics due to their comfort and expertise with those literary forms. Of course, part of the problem with criticism lies with appropriately applied expertise. The fact remains that instead of each publication having multiple reviewers who each specialize in different areas or forms of theatre (so that there would ideally be one critic who reviewed all musicals as his/her field of expertise), the papers have a very few critics who review everything. When reading these critics’ reviews for subtextual information, we must be aware of such limitations due to expertise. One must also keep in mind that generally very little has been written on specific critics, and on the profession as a whole not much more exists besides opinion articles in newspapers written by the critics themselves (and some other theatre professionals) as to what they believe

29 Robert Brustein, “The Function of Theatre Criticism at the Present Time,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 36.6 (Mar. 1983): 17-27.

their roles to be.30 However, a few significant articles on the art of criticism do aid in synthesizing the critic’s role, but these are also typically written by critics and generally intended more as idealistic guidelines to writing criticism than actual commentary or analysis on specific present criticism.31 The two best sources I have encountered in my research of British and American criticism are Stefanova-Peteva’s Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages? and Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages? These compilations of interviews of theatre critics and practitioners offer general attitudes towards the profession and give insight to particular critics’ aims and perspectives on their roles. Most of the major critics who wrote reviews of Parade in both New York and London are included in Stefanova-Peteva’s works, which help illuminate these critics’ motivations for writing criticism, their backgrounds in theatre and education, and their perceptions of their roles within the theatrical community. Such information is useful when analyzing the productions’ critical receptions in which I will focus on the major city publications and accordingly, the major critics for those papers. For example, I will spend a significant amount of time on Ben Brantley’s review from The New York Times as that paper is known for “making or breaking” a Broadway show. But I also will spend a good deal of time on critics such as Ken Mandelbaum (Show Music) and David Patrick Stearns (USA Today) because of their backgrounds in music. What I hope to discover is existing similarities throughout the reviews of how critics receive a work such as Parade and what they determine to be the key factors in its success or failures.

Parade in Production

Jason Robert Brown is only one of many New Voices in musical theatre today, most of whom are virtually ignored. By taking one of these new works, Parade, I would like to explore how this musical works onstage and how critics analyze it, both in terms of its artistic elements, as well as in its potential for audience engagement. To have a solid understanding of this criticism is vital, as critics shape the way audiences receive musicals through their written opinions, whether they desire to do so or not. When the critic of The New York Times possesses the power to close a show overnight, it is essential that we know where this critic is coming from and the goals and restrictions placed on him or her by the publication. To better understand the critic is to better understand the review is to better understand the production is to better understand the basic musical form. Recognizing the limitations and roles of all three offers a better overall appreciation for the genre and its artistic potential. Parade, an amalgamation of traditional and new techniques and topics, is ideal for such a case study of critical and musical analysis. Critical analyses of its Broadway and London premiere productions provide the perfect opportunity to discover how this musical works to engage audiences, how critical reception alters

30 Usually such writings are simply collections of the critics’ reviews with perhaps an introduction that sums up the critics’ careers and influences. Such examples are John Simon on Theatre: Criticism 1974- 2003 (2005) and Benedict Nightingale’s Fifth Row Center: A Critic's Year On and Off Broadway (1986). Usually such compilations are only supplied for the “greats” such as Kenneth Tynan, Harold Hobson, and Frank Rich. Only a couple of the many critics who I will be discussing have garnered such publications.

31 See Brustein, “The Function of Theatre Criticism” and Kalb, “The Death (and Life).” Also see: Gordon Rogoff, “Theatre Criticism: The Elusive Object, the Fading Craft,” Performing Arts Journal 9.2/3 (1985): 133-141. Also see: Dubravka Vrgoc, “Deadly Criticism,” TDR 40.2 (Summer 1996): 10- 12.

over years and miles, and how both production concepts and critical reviews affect and aid the continuing trajectory of the American musical.

CHAPTER ONE

PARADE ON BROADWAY

The show is courageous in a lot of ways to me. I think the subject matter...but also theatrically, the way we do it is fairly courageous. We keep saying it's wrapped up in a love story, but it's far from a conventionally-told piece of theater. That interested me. . . . I want theater to be special. Gutsy. . . . I want you to say "Look, he put himself out on a limb. They all went out there, and they did something that was scary and it was hard." - Jason Robert Brown, less than one month after the Broadway production opened.32

I can look back at Parade, which I’m enormously proud of on an artistic level, and see decisions we could have made that would have let the audience into the show more without compromising what we accomplished artistically. . . . We very much were writing Parade in an ivory-tower place. - Jason Robert Brown, five years later.33

Parade tells a historically true story, but it also possesses the potential to reach audiences both intellectually and emotionally through its topical social commentary and its unique (largely musical) character development. It seems strange then that its premiere production on Broadway failed to reach audiences, closing after only eighty-five performances. With Hal Prince, known for his enormous success in taking on “tough sell” musicals, at the helm of the project, Alfred Uhry, the playwright most well known for tales of Southern Jewry, shaping the book, and the much talked about newcomer Jason Robert Brown supplying the musical score, one would predict a respectable run and correspondingly positive reviews. I would argue, however, that the musical’s relative failure was actually due to one of the main reasons Parade was anticipated by many to be Broadway success: the Broadway production’s staging and design, the style of which Prince attributed to the decision to base his directorial concept on film noir and possibly agitprop techniques, hindered the production by inhibiting the musical and its characters from connecting – emotionally and intellectually – with their audience.34 Although the promotional materials and

32 Jason Robert Brown, interview with Thomas Cott, “A Conversation with Jason Robert Brown,” Lincoln Center Theater, 13 Jan. 1999, 29 Jan. 2008 .

33 Brown, qtd. in Jackson R. Bryer and Richard A. Davison, ed., The Art of the American Musical (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005) 30.

34 Jason Robert Brown, “Re: Parade question…,” e-mail to author, 8 Feb. 2008. Foster Hirsch, Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre (New York: Applause, 2005) 222. Prince biographer Foster Hirsch observed this same approach in Parade: Prince directed the show as if he was a defense attorney prepared to risk his life for his falsely accused client. There was no trace of the cool directorial comment or observation that have often been part of the Prince touch in the past: this was agitprop theatre, enflamed and committed. With the polemical “Living Newspapers” of the 1930s as a model, Prince conceived, and staged, Parade as an indictment.

the libretto also contributed to the lack of the musical’s commercial success, ultimately, I feel, it was Prince’s artistic choices that resulted in a production with which audiences were largely unable to connect. While certain aspects of Uhry’s book offered their own inherent problems, Prince had a hand in the libretto’s structure and essentially every creative decision during the writing process as well. Though he and his co-creators stated (and continue to maintain) that the focus of the musical was the developing relationship between Leo Frank and his wife Lucille, Prince helped shape Parade into a product fitting a directorial concept that distanced audiences through the didactic use of a reappearing parade, an enormous and foreboding oak tree, and the confusing staging of the trial. The result was a production that offered audiences neither an opportunity to intellectually engage with the issues nor to empathize with the characters that the musical presents. Instead, the product was an instructive examination of a historical event that suppressed what I believe to be the full potential of Parade. These techniques further problematized the musical’s distressing subject matter, which ostensibly audiences were already unsure of despite (or perhaps because of) its topicality. Of course, Prince’s choices alone cannot fully account for the production’s inability to connect with audiences. Composer Jason Robert Brown points out that the musical’s abbreviated run was at least partially due to expectations associated with the Vivian Beaumont Theater where it premiered: “We were faced with Lincoln Center’s audience, which is a very old subscription audience and a very stuck-in-the-mud audience. They started walking out about twelve minutes into the show, and by intermission a third of the audience would be gone.”35 While Brown admits that this occurred mostly during previews and only infrequently during the show’s actual run, he does make a valid point regarding Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) and its typical audience. The Lincoln Center, the nation’s largest non-profit organization, was built in 1959 as the centerpiece of an immense federally-funded urban renewal project for the Upper West Side. Located on a sixteen-acre campus that consists of plazas and various inviting, open spaces, and surrounded by a multitude of restaurants, chic shops, and upscale residential areas, this, the nation’s first performing arts complex, sparked an “economic renaissance” for the area.36 Lincoln Center also houses the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, Julliard School, and several other iconic cultural institutions. With all these centers of high culture, Lincoln Center’s audiences certainly could have expected much of the same refined, high-brow entertainment from the Center’s theatrical productions. If so, one can

When queried about Prince’s possible use of agitprop, Brown replied that while the term was referenced by the director several times during the production process, he (Brown) “wouldn’t even know how to ‘think agitprop.’” This suggests that an agitprop approach was not agreed upon, nor necessarily embraced, by the entire creative team. While both Hirsch and Prince reference the term agitprop, the stylistic choices employed and the manner in which they were actually utilized resembles the more didactic approach of the early stages of Epic theatre. Although the idea of staging Parade in the style of the Living Newspapers is an intriguing consideration, Prince never directly refers to his choices as inspired by this form, and to analyze that specific style and its applicableness to this musical is a tangential project that is beyond the scope of this thesis.

35 Qtd. in Bryer 44.

36 Stephen Stamas and Sharon Zane, Lincoln Center: A Promise Realized, 1979-2006 (Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007) 2.

suspect that musicals – especially those of New Voices such as Brown – were not exactly what audiences anticipated from the Center’s theatrical division. Originally envisioned as an American Old Vic with a rotating repertory of plays, the vision for LCT changed when Joseph Papp came on board as artistic director in 1972. Papp wished to focus on the production of new American plays, not the revivals that LCT had previously staged, but it was not until 1992 when André Bishop took over that a new musical (Ahrens and Flaherty’s My Favorite Year) was produced at LCT’s Vivian Beaumont. Despite Bishop’s creation of a new position at LCT entitled Director of Musical Theater (originated and still held today by Ira Weitzman), between 1992 and 1998 when Parade premiered, only two other musicals (both revivals) were produced at the Beaumont: Company (1993) and Carousel (1994).37 And while the LCT’s history is not entirely without new and significant contributions to the American musical theatre – including some by the New Voices – such musicals were unheard of as being produced at the Beaumont prior to Parade’s premiere.38 LCT subscription audiences accustomed to classics by such greats as Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein – not to mention the LC’s operas and ballets – were not necessarily prepared for such new works that challenged the accepted conventions of the traditional musical. And while the LCT’s motto, “Good Plays at Popular Prices,” implies a target audience of diverse individuals, those “popular prices” are not exactly cheap. Founder John D. Rockefeller III’s mandate that “the arts are not for the privileged few, but for the many,” clearly did not anticipate the average ticket price of $70, which inhibits student spectators and others unable to afford such pricey seats.39 With a conservative production history (where musicals are concerned), high prices, and a location in an affluent area of New York City, LCT’s audiences tend to consist of older, more opulent crowds that are accustomed to high-brow entertainment, which would partially explain the many walk- outs during previews. Adding another layer to the already problematic set of expectations associated with Lincoln Center productions, was the marketing of Parade. The poster, drawn by LCT's principal poster artist, James McMullan, was a contradiction in terms. It depicted a cartoonish, forlorn Leo Frank (McMullan’s style is a cross between water color paintings and comic book drawings) standing behind a barred window, looking down on a Confederate Memorial Day parade. Colored in warm hues of red, blue, and yellow, and boasting the tagline, “A TRUE STORY. A LOVE STORY. A MUSICAL,” the poster demonstrated Leo’s isolation and tragic fate, while the warm tones (which one would associate with a cheerful, celebratory subject) and the insistence (in capital letters) that the musical was a “love story,” misled. Here then, McMullan

37 Prior to Bishop’s arrival in 1992, the only musicals produced at the Beaumont were Man of La Mancha (1972), The Three Penny Opera (1976), and Anything Goes (1987). Those following Parade include: It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues (1999), Marie Christine (1999), Contact (2000), Anything Goes (2002), The Frogs (2004), The Light in the Piazza (2005), and South Pacific (2008).

38 The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater – also housed in the same building as the Beaumont, but not considered a Broadway theatre (having only 299 seats) – has a better, however limited, history for producing new and challenging musicals: Sarafina! (1987) Hello Again (1993), A New Brain (1998), A Man of No Importance (2002), Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003), Dessa Rose (2005), and Bernarda Alba (2006).

39 LCT’s website, on the other hand, claims that the average ticket price is $32. About LCT, Lincoln Center Theater, 5 Oct. 2007 .

illustrated the conflicting foci in Parade. Was the musical’s center a warm love story? Or did it center on a story of intolerance, both historical and topical? McMullan implied in his art what he directly related in his statement, “There was a lot of contention with Parade – I had done many, many pieces of art for Parade.”40 While he never expounded on the nature of the contention surrounding the musical, the production obviously struggled with the question of Parade’s central story – an issue that was never resolved. The confusion regarding what to label Parade – whether a “love story,” “true story,” or any other kind of story, was further exacerbated in LCT’s promotion of the musical on its website, which boasted that the musical has a “knockout score” in which “Brown has written a dazzling assortment of ballads, comedy numbers, anthems and more.” Potential spectators were also informed that “the lavish production will have a cast of over thirty actors.”41 With flashy musical descriptors like “knockout” and “dazzling,” as well as the false assertion that “comedy numbers” run rampant throughout the score (while there exist some “light” numbers – “The Picture Show” and “Pretty Music” – none can be accurately labeled “comical”), Parade was depicted as the traditional Rodgers and Hammerstein-type musical that has a serious subject, but always balances somber moments with comical numbers and “lavish production” elements. Because of such inaccurate advertising, audiences were not prepared for the overwhelmingly dark tone of Hal Prince’s production, and due to this, an immediate distancing occurred between the production and the spectators, many of who were arguably put-off by the unexpected mood of the piece.42 One can see how audiences could have expected a conventional musical, but the combination of Prince’s production choices and Uhry’s book created an entirely different kind of work that forcefully depicted Frank’s seemingly indisputable victimization by a group of anti- Semitic hicks.43 Prince’s direction seemed to take root from the challenges of Uhry’s book that

40 McMullan, James, interview with Thomas Cott, “A Conversation with Thomas Cott,” 16 Dec. 1998, Lincoln Center Theater Platform Series, 20 Jan. 2008 . I attempted to contact McMullan regarding this “contention,” but received no answer from either LCT or the artist himself.

41 “Parade,” Lincoln Center Theater, 5 Oct. 2007 .

42 Almost all critics take the time to mention the overwhelmingly dark tone of the production, the reception of which will be more fully explored in the following chapter.

43 Due to Prince’s stated belief that Frank was “completely innocent,” Foster Hirsch notes that “it would therefore become the show’s responsibility to present [Frank] as the victim of a Dixie-based strain of anti- Semitism” (218). Prince wrote two forwards to Hirsch’s book (one for the original publication in 1989 and another for the 2005 updated version that includes the original forward as well). In the first, he lists the few points on which he disagrees with Hirsch about his work. The chapter on Parade is only in the 2005 publication, and in that forward he refers to Hirsch’s work as “an illuminating, accurate and responsible history of an art form in peril.” He goes on genially to state, “[Hirsch’s] critiques are forceful, well stated, and I disagree with some of them!” (xii). So while Prince may disagree with Hirsch’s observation of the representation of the Southerners in Parade, the fact that Hirsch, along with multiple critics (as I will illustrate in the next chapter), interpreted those characters in this way demonstrates that, regardless of intention, each artistic choice within the production pointed towards this interpretation of the Southerners.

Prince also helped to shape. For Parade’s premiere incarnation, Alfred Uhry ambitiously strove to incorporate a great deal of historical detail into his book. Uhry’s inclusions shaped a book that overall presented an accurate portrait of the post-antebellum South and the Leo Frank case, but at times diverged into unnecessary exposition and troubling characterizations.44 Frank’s case is so deeply steeped in the history and culture that is unique to the South of the time, that to include all the pertinent details and issues would be impossible. Yet Uhry’s original book attempted to touch on everything, making for an at times convoluted, confusing, and inaccessible text. It is therefore important to analyze the Broadway libretto in order to better understand Prince’s choices and their significance. While the pastiche score rooted in popular styles works to fill in some of the emotional gaps left by the script, the result was a rather difficult musical that tended to distance itself from the audience, almost as though to see how far it could go with its myriad of difficult characters and complex themes before losing spectators entirely. The Leo Frank case includes a dramatis personae of literally hundreds, and though Parade’s book does not include each of these people, the original libretto does offer a rather large cast list of over thirty characters. Because of this, very little time is devoted to each character's development, which leaves little for spectators to connect with. This also creates a litany of generally underdeveloped, stock-like characters who either have little to do within the musical (prompting questions as to why they are there), or that are given jobs too significant for characters that the audience barely recognizes. Inexplicably, audiences were presented with Lizzie, Mrs. Phagan’s sister who did little more than follow her around the stage, and Sally Slaton who essentially offered the same unnecessary assistance to her husband, Governor Slaton. But there were also characters that were assigned their own songs (implying some kind of importance), and yet the audience was never properly introduced to them or to their roles in the story. The first such character was Fiddlin’ John Carson, who sang a kind of rallying cry to “The People of Atlanta” throughout the trial, fueling their fury towards Frank. While the character was based on a man of the same name who stood outside the courthouse playing his guitar to such songs as “The Ballad of Mary Phagan” (“Come, all you jolly people, / Wherever you may be, / Suppose little Mary Phagan / Belonged to you or me”), he had no real purpose in the musical other than to open the trial’s musical sequence and reinforce the anti- Semitism that the Populist Tom Watson shamelessly advocates throughout both versions of the musical.45 In other words, Carson was superfluous. Furthermore, and more importantly, there existed the possibility that he distanced spectators from the action, because they did not recognize him (he only appeared during the trial and he was never referred to by name) and so they were unable to connect with him or the faceless crowd he was rallying. Another set of characters works in very much the same way as Fiddlin’ John. The African-American servants, Riley and Angela, only have one significant moment in the musical,

44 Though Prince is billed as “co-conceiver” of the musical, he did not contribute any dialogue or lyrics. Rather, he guided Uhry and Brown, consistently presenting feedback to them during the writing process. Because the musical was revised for the London premiere, this version that appeared on Broadway is no longer available for performances. Due to this, I chose to write about both the Broadway production and its libretto in the past tense. Whenever I write in present tense, one can assume that the statement applies to both the old (Broadway) and new (London) librettos of the show.

45 John Carson, “The Ballad of Mary Phagan,” rpt. in Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) 166-8.

the Motown-infused “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin.'” This song reminds the audience of the precarious position of African Americans shortly after the Civil War and demonstrates how immensely significant and shocking it was that the testimony of an African American (Jim Conley) was the deciding factor in a white (Jewish) man’s fate: RILEY: They comin’, they comin’ now, yissirree! NEWT: ‘Cause a white man gonna get hung, you see. RILEY, NEWT & CONLEY: There’s a black man swingin’ in ev’ry tree RILEY, ANGLEA, NEWT & CONLEY: But they don’t never pay attention!46 While the song provides important socio-cultural commentary, it did so in the Broadway production mainly through characters that spectators had only seen on the periphery of the action (while simultaneously confusing the characters of Newt Lee and Jim Conley – especially the former, who had never before expressed any kind of hostility or bitterness). For this commentary to really hit home, audiences needed a stronger emotional connection to Riley and Angela (and even to Newt, whose part as the night watchman who discovers Mary’s body, is small), but after this song, as before it, these two characters drifted into the background, never to be heard from again, and only to be seen standing on the edges of Governor Slaton’s party (during the number “Pretty Music”). Like Riley and Angela, Judge Roan, who sentences Frank to death, makes no connection with the audience as he almost silently resides over the trial, and yet he claimed his own musical number late in the second act of this production. In his “Letter to the Governor” (a scene/song which has since been omitted from the show) he admitted, “Maybe I was wrong. / Maybe what was ‘obvious’ then / Would not have been for long, / But I would not delay,” thereby prompting Governor Slaton to commute Frank’s sentence.47 In this scene, the judge sits alone in a wheelchair, his frail body nearly engulfed by the expanse of the stage. Spectators had not gotten to know this character – Why is he in a wheelchair? Why are his regrets important? And why, out of nowhere, does he have his own song? – yet the song, however brief, related vital information, as it revealed why and how Frank’s sentence was changed.48 Again, hugely significant information had been allotted to an extremely minor character, thereby lessening the impact and import of his revelation to the audience. One more character had a problematic role within Parade’s original production. Britt Craig, the ambitious and conniving reporter who documents the trial from the initial discovery of the body all the way through Frank’s lynching, was introduced early on in the first act in the musical fanfare, “Big News!” The musical number (since omitted from the show except for a reprise) was as big as Craig’s personality – charmingly brash, loud, and quick to the punch – emphasizing his desperate ambition and cocky charm, as well as the unbearable slowness of the news before the Leo Frank case began:

46 Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry, Parade, The New American Musical: An Anthology from the End of the Century, ed. Wiley Hausam (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003) 304. All lyrics quoted within this chapter are taken from this version of the libretto. A side note: in the new libretto, “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’” is sung entirely by Riley and Angela.

47 Brown and Uhry 314.

48 In life, Roan had cancer, and by the time he wrote that fateful letter to Slaton in 1914, the disease had spread throughout his body and he was confined to a wheelchair and to a sanitarium.

You got a kitten up a tree? Well, come to me! And I’ll see It makes it on the front page! The mayor’s mother broke her toe? They gotta know! Stop the press – it’s a mess! It’s the scandal of the age!! Hell, it’s big news!49 Craig’s character represents a hugely important historical aspect: this was one of the first instances of the press sensationalizing news in order to beat out competition and sell more papers – and many historians believe that the bad press regarding Frank (much of it cropping up before he was even indicted) constitutes one of the principal reasons for both his arrest and guilty verdict.50 Though the media played a major role in the case, and despite Craig’s grandiose entrance into the musical, Parade’s Broadway production did not follow through with either the theme or the character. Craig appeared intermittently throughout the rest of the first act, acting as both a reporter questioning officials and as a kind of narrator for the audience. At Mary’s funeral he directly related information to the audience regarding the crowd that gathered at the ceremony and offered a description of the ominously overcast day. Despite his reprise of his introductory song (“Real Big News”) that informs spectators of the press’s corrupt tactics, and though he opened the second act with a sequence in which he narrated what had happened in the year since Frank was convicted, he disappeared as though entirely forgotten, until the closing scene. Craig’s role as a narrator (who filled in historical gaps and explicated Atlanta’s social climate) could have been utilized as the audience’s direct connection to a text so steeped in history as to appear daunting. The musical, however, failed to follow through with this useful character device. Instead, Craig became yet another character that was underutilized and almost wholly unknown to the audience. An ineffective, and at best, sporadic narrator whose presence merely added to the already long list of minor characters given vital exposition, Craig was one of a cast of thirty-some characters, only a half dozen of which the audience became acquainted with on a more personal level. While the trial (in both the Broadway and London productions) itself consists of a catalog of characters (due to the questioning of numerous witnesses), the overall production became a parade of inconsequential characters at the expense of some of the story’s most significant players – the Franks, lawyers Rosser and Dorsey, and Tom Watson – who were insufficiently fleshed out due to lack of stage time and development. Religious zealot Watson, who creators Uhry and Brown seemed to desire to spearhead the anti-Semitic case against Frank, was only provided with a single, short song, “Where Will You Stand When the Flood Comes?”51 As with Britt Craig, Judge Roan, and Riley and Angela, creators Uhry and Brown charged Watson with too large a task for so little developed a character. While the ensemble and others such as

49 Brown and Uhry 258.

50 Contemporary audiences may draw strong parallels between the Frank case and the O.J. Simpson trial, as both murder trials heavily involved race and sensationalistic media.

51 Supporting the idea that Brown and Uhry may have desired Watson to be more of a driving force in the musical is the song they added for this character (“Hammer of Justice”) in the London production.

Mary’s mother hinted at prejudice against Jews, none were permitted to elaborate upon this theme. Rather, Watson alone was charged with producing the majority of the anti-Semitic feeling that raged against Frank, but he was not permitted to do so until nearly the end of the musical: Will you beg for the Jew’s reward Or walk with us at the side of the Lord? Put your soul in the Devil’s hand? Well, where will you stand when the flood comes?52 Watson sings this (in both productions) while Slaton simultaneously commutes Frank’s sentence to life in prison, thereby inciting the crowd’s rage at Slaton’s decision, and while the music tensely builds, so does the people’s furor. Yet before this point, little had been seen of Tom Watson in the production, and while the blatantly intolerant lyrics and ominous score clearly indicate that audiences should dislike him and the Southerners who rally against Frank, the moment was not nearly as effective as it could have been had he been fully introduced earlier on and then continually developed throughout the course of the musical. As it happened, however, the spectators’ antipathy for Watson had not been properly developed in conjunction with their sympathy for Frank. Because Parade’s original character list represented a long list of historic individuals involved in the case, and because as it was written for the premiere production each of those characters possessed important information to relay to the audience, spectators were consistently bombarded with new characters and issues: Riley and Angela offered the newly-freed Southern African-American perspective, Craig represented the sensationalist press, and Watson installed anti-Semitic fanaticism. While they would continue to serve these purposes in the London production, here they were then discarded, and the production moved on to other issues via other characters. Yet Alfred Uhry continually defends his sympathy for these underdeveloped characters: I didn’t want this to be some sort of noble thing about this Jewish man who was brought down by vicious rednecks, because I didn’t see it that way. Because I’m Southern, and I know that those people suffered. I know that they were defeated. I know that their lives were ruined, and they had believed in that cause with all their heart and soul, and that they lost. And not only did they lose, they went home, they lost their farms. They had been moved to town, and they had to put their little kids to work. It was a hard thing.53 Uhry’s sympathy for the defeated and broken Southerners did not fully appear in these characters as they existed in the original script. In fact, the opposite can be said to be true (and will be discussed in the next chapter): spending so little time on them only allowed them to develop as

52 Brown and Uhry 329.

53 Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry, “A Conversation with Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown, interview with Thomas Cott, Lincoln Center Theater, 27 Jan. 1999, 5 Nov. 2006 .

much as stock characters, with Watson, for example, standing in for the quintessential hatemongering villain.54 While the supporting characters could conceivably function as stock characters, those of Leo and Lucille arguably call for a greater depth, and their relationship (which all three creators, including Prince, maintain was and is central to the musical) achieve enough stage time and development to negate the Franks’ use as a mere instructional device. Still, the time spent with the Franks was not quite enough to develop them into full and satisfying characters for spectators to emotionally engage with consistently. Their stage time, and therefore development, was depleted by the multitudes of other characters. Because of this, Leo Frank has to accomplish a great deal in a very little amount of time, and so much of his character’s emotion is related largely through the music itself rather than simply and directly through his lyrics and spoken dialogue (which indicate other aspects of his character). This musical technique works both to conserve time and reveal Frank as the reserved and practical man that he is – a man who would never speak his feelings aloud because doing so would in his mind be wasting time and would also make him extremely uncomfortable. The music then speaks for Frank when he himself can or will not. As Brown explains, “Most of the emotional content of Parade, by design, is musical. It’s subtextual; there’s a lot of bubbling under these characters. . . . In Parade we were saying, ‘People do things that they don’t say and say things that they don’t do.’55 In his thesis, Adam Roberts more specifically points out that it is not until Leo’s musical declaration “This Is Not Over Yet” near the end of the musical that he breaks free from the constant musical repetition that informs his character.56 Frank’s meticulous nature and devotion to routine is reflected musically through ostinati – that is, until his character evolves into a less exacting and more affectionate man in the second act. While the music fills in character at times when the script cannot, there remains the problem of what kind of character the original script depicts Leo as being. Because in Brown’s words Leo is “someone who doesn’t naturally sing,” the majority of Leo’s character was showcased through scenes of dialogue and most prominently, through the scenes with his lawyer, Luther Z. Rosser, the only major character who did not sing at all.57 Leo had about equal the number of scenes with Rosser as he had with his wife, Lucille, and with both of these characters, Leo was harsh and demanding (until the musical “break” in his character in “This Is Not Over Yet”), but it was with Rosser especially that Leo was depicted not simply as cold and insistent, but as prejudiced and outright difficult to bear.

54 This lack of dimensionality could be to the advantage of a director. For example, poster-type acting and declaiming were employed for the amateur actors who participated in agitprop performances and such performances did not emphasize psychological characterization. In this production, however, characters such as Watson seem underdeveloped rather than linked to an earlier theatre tradition.

55 Qtd. in Bryer 44.

56 Roberts 24.

57 Jason Robert Brown, interview with Gregory Bossler, “New Voices: Jason Robert Brown,” The Dramatist 2 (1999): 23. This was not always the case: for a brief time during the rehearsal process, Rosser sang a short song entitled “One of Us,” which occurred upon his and Frank’s first meeting in the jail. In the song, Rosser attempted to convince Leo to assimilate and be more like “us” (the Southerners) in order to make him appear more sympathetic to jurors and the press.

In workshops, Rosser was not nearly as prominent a character as he became in the Broadway production, but Prince desired the lawyer to possess a larger part in the musical and so, during previews, Uhry and Brown altered a number of scenes in the first act to accommodate this request.58 The result of Prince’s guidance was a character who, though in life one of the best and most professional lawyers in Atlanta, became a crude, brash clown of a lawyer who insisted to his client, “You piss, puke, fart or spit nickels, I wanna know about it,” and who (in response to Leo’s revelation that he does not have any children) incredulously inquired, “You got a pecker, don’t you?”59 More problematic than even the incompetent and unnecessarily ignorant Rosser was that Leo then acted similarly when in his lawyer’s presence. Though until this point the book and score had never depicted Leo as comfortable in his new Southern home or even as sympathetic to his Southern neighbors (see his musical introduction, “How Can I Call This Home?”), Leo’s insistence, “I was railroaded by redneck savages and people need to know that” and his further clarification, “I don’t mean Southern people. I mean real people” were problematic.60 For audiences to empathize with him Frank need not be his wife’s equal in warmth and affection, but he certainly did not need to equal the bigotry of Rosser, Tom Watson, and Prosecutor Dorsey, especially when there is no evidence that Frank harbored any such blatant prejudice in life. In this production, Frank eventually fired Rosser (a fictional development), which did allow him time to develop into a demonstrative husband and more relaxed individual late in act two, but some could certainly argue that by then it was too late. With such a negative depiction of Leo already established, there remained the distinct possibility that the rather difficult lead character could be a significant problem for audiences who had already been 1) misled by the show’s publicity and the creators’ declarations that the central story was a romance, and 2) bombarded by a litany of difficult (stock-like) characters.61 Asking audiences to empathize with Leo, who on the surface does not appear much more complex than those in the supporting cast of characters, is then extremely problematic unless the production highlights the character-developing score. A careful directorial approach that is sensitive to an audience’s needs could certainly have made such a challenging musical more accessible for its audience.

58 Bryer 44.

59 Brown and Uhry 271, 270. While Rosser was indeed a prominent and well-respected lawyer in Atlanta, he became notorious for his fumbling of Frank’s case. Maintaining an inexplicable strategy that included rarely cross-questioning many of the girls who accused Frank of lewd advances and never investigating the evidence that could have very well proven Frank’s innocence (see Oney 31, regarding the human feces – Jim Conley’s – discovered under the elevator in the factory’s basement). Rosser was all but eliminated from the London libretto, in which he barely interacts with Leo and possesses only a few lines. As a result, the blatant ignorance of his character and its effects on Leo also disappeared from the musical.

60 Brown and Uhry 305-6.

61 Bryer 39: Brown implicates himself, Uhry, and Prince equally: “We hashed out what the central journey of the show was going to be: Leo and Lucille and how they were going to come together through this very traumatic and horrible event from having a very sterile marriage to having a truly understanding and loving marriage. Hal’s input in that was equally important . . . We all hashed it out.”

The directorial choices made in production, however, did not invite audiences to actively engage (emotionally or intellectually) with the material but created a polarized perspective of a victim and his persecutors. Though Prince admitted that “some people still think Leo Frank is guilty, and in the South, the story is still bubbling,” he concluded that Frank was “completely innocent.”62 To Prince, there appeared no question regarding Leo’s innocence, and while this innocence went unquestioned by Uhry and Brown as well, both men offered openings in the Broadway libretto and score for less dogged interpretations of the case, most notably in their attempts (such as “The Old Red Hills of Home”) to create sympathy for and understanding of the South and its people.63 Despite these opportunities for a fuller and less biased interpretation of the history, the direction emphasized the moral conviction of Leo’s innocence, essentially informing spectators that the Southerners were “bad” and that the Franks were “good” by default. Of course, the Franks’ general lack of stage time and development (that was not musical) further aided these designations, making it difficult for spectators to empathize with them. The production choices almost seemed to indicate that spectators should have recognized the injustice that occurred without ever becoming emotionally involved or even intellectually engaged with the proceedings. Had the staging and other artistic choices offered moments within the musical and its production for audiences to grapple with some of the ambiguities of the case including Franks’ innocence, the result might have been a more intellectually engaging experience (rather than a seemingly one-sided history lesson). This was made most clear in the film noir-inspired scenic and lighting designs that Prince favored and in the staging of the three- time appearance of the Confederate Memorial Day parade, as well as the staging of the trial. Prince’s philosophy of directing often begins with the set design: “I think that in the best shows I’ve done, that detail has been augmented by the scenery. I anguish over the scenery for a year or for eighteen months; I start working on it when the show isn’t even written yet because it will affect the completion of the writing of the show.”64 This concentration on the importance of the set was indeed present with Parade; when the original designer’s vision for the musical did not quite match with Prince’s, the director held a design competition, working with four different designers at once, but eventually choosing Riccardo Hernandez, best known for his working relationship with George C. Wolfe (the writer and director involved with such challenging musicals as Jelly’s Last Jam, The Wild Party, and Caroline, or Change). The design Prince and Hernandez finally agreed on for Parade’s sprawling story was simple and direct (thereby drawing spectators’ focus to the issues at hand, rather than distracting them with spectacle), with hints of noir and expressionistic elements.65 In his first time working

62 Qtd. in Hirsch 218.

63 In an interview with Thomas Cott at LCT, Uhry and Brown revealed their views on Leo’s innocence. Uhry stated, “We believe that Jim Conley, the sweeper, killed Mary Phagan. And we suggest that in the show. We don’t really know; it’s about 95% sure.” Brown follows, “It’s certainly a divisive issue. . . . So we’ve made up our minds personally. And I think if you read the evidence closely enough, you’ll make up your mind about it the same way that Alfred and I did.” It is also relevant to know that Uhry grew up in Atlanta and has personal connections to the Franks (his grandmother was a friend of Lucille Frank, and his great-uncle Sigmund Montag owned the National Pencil Factory), as such a background would indicate a more informed and personal view of the South and its people.

64 Qtd. in Bryer 180.

65 All three creators acknowledged a common cinematic inspiration. Uhry: “We were constantly trying

on a thrust stage, Prince desired a sense of the action “spilling” out of its frame. He explains: “I wanted it to look like film noir, and all the film noir techniques, of lighting, mood, and atmosphere, are compatible on such a stage.”66 Yet a three-sided black surround gave the thrust the look of a proscenium, and while that added to the presentation of a film noir style (as the stage was then boxed causing it to look like a film screen), such an effect created distance between spectators and performers, rather than drawing them into the action in a way that a thrust usually allows. This surround encompassed a sparse stage, drawing focus to the massive, ominous oak tree stationed upstage right. The enormous tree, with its leafless branches extending over the entire stage, ominously and blatantly reminded the audience from the opening number throughout the entirety of the musical what was to become of Frank. Even so, Hernandez’s original design was too romantic (and seemingly expressionistic) for Prince’s tastes, and so the designer ultimately constructed what he referred to as the “guillotines” – structures that opened to form dozens of horizontal windows in the walls. Hanging over the set at all times, and framing the stage along with the three-sided surround (which Hernandez referred to as “a Hal Prince master touch”) was a virtual jail cell, yet another (noir) reminder of Frank’s fate.67 Adding to that was Howell Binkley’s noir-like lighting design that bolstered the framed, severe set with near darkness only to be starkly contrasted with a wash of white light on Leo and Lucille during their solos.68 The result was a design that literally represented the South’s transference from an agrarian past (the expressionistic tree) to an industrialized future (the “guillotines” that represented not only Frank’s prison cell, but the pencil factory and the city as well – the factory in a city that was imprisoning not only the South’s men, but its women and children) and all of the tensions that resulted from that severe change. The stark design was striking in all that it represented, but it was also, like the noir films that inspired it, cold, distant, and alienating – both

to do something cinematic and I deliberately wrote scenes that were tight, concise, and in some cases open-ended, leaving it to the audience’s imagination to fill in the gaps” (Horowitz 51). Brown: “We were all thinking cinematically. That’s why there aren’t more places for applause, and there aren’t many blackouts. It moves fast. We wanted that. The Alfred Hitchcock movie The Wrong Man, with Henry Fonda, seemed appropriate to me. The structure of that movie informed the structure of my music. . . . I always thought of Parade as a Hitchcock musical. Hal says his instinct was Citizen Kane” (Interview with Gregory Bossler 22). Brown regarding Prince: “He certainly referenced Fritz Lang's M and Hitchcock's The Wrong Man on occasion” (email to author, 7 Feb. 2008).

66 Qtd. in Hirsch 223.

67 David Barbour, “The Dream of Atlanta,” Entertainment Design April 1999: 43.

68 This lighting often created what is referred to as the umwelt, or the joining and protecting rays of light identifying objects and characters bunched together in their own isolated environment, separate from the fearful unknown. Binkley created such an effect between scenes one and two: When the last note of “The Old Red Hills” was sung, the townspeople parted and then froze, as the lights went down on them. They remained (in the dark) framing the action of the following scene that involved Leo and Lucille under a protective white light, interacting in their bedroom. This clearly demonstrated the segregation of the Franks from the townspeople, as well as their mutual fears of each other. This lighting, in addition to the use of the “guillotines,” is typical of the noir form which employs much of this type of visual symbolism indicating that its characters are always in a prison created by the surrounding, threatening city.

for the characters themselves and the spectators watching them. As designed, Parade was literally a dark musical with a consistently, and perhaps even unrelentingly, somber tone. The serious tone was not a problem in and of itself. It was the way that the production exploited the tone for didactic purposes that, I believe, troubled spectators who were never given the opportunity to reflect on the subject for themselves; rather, the design and staging indicated to them from start to finish exactly what to feel about Leo and his Southern persecutors. But there remained a problem with such a directorial concept: while it was obvious on all fronts that spectators were meant to believe in Frank’s innocence, they were never given enough of a reason to care about his fate. Though other musicals have proven unsympathetic protagonists effective (and Leo is certainly not entirely unsympathetic), none have created an entire cast (excepting Lucille) of such characters, nor attempted aggressively to do so from a seemingly moralizing stance. To emphasize the arguably heavy-handed scenic design, the production utilized an actual staging of the Confederate Memorial Day parade as a metaphor and framing device that opened both acts and appeared a third and final time in the closing scene.69 In the opening number, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” the characters are fighting for the South. It is pre-Civil War in Marietta and in the Broadway production the Young Soldier (Jeff Edgerton), framed by the surround and virtual darkness, stood alone in a wash of white light under the looming oak tree. He sang in reference to his love, Lila, “of the day / When I’ll hold you again / In a home safe from fear / When the Southland is free.”70 Here (in both the Broadway and the current version of the score), the Young Soldier vocalizes the noble cause of freedom in his love note to Lila, seemingly in order to gain the audience’s sympathy.71 As the song goes on, the music continues to swell and finally culminates in a burst of nationalistic pride for “the old red hills of home”: Let all the blood of the North spill upon them ‘Til they’ve paid for what they’ve wrought, Taken back the lies they’ve taught, And there’s peace in Marietta And we’re safe again in Georgia In the land where Honor lives and breathes.72 Arguably, the audience would be taken in by the Soldier’s youth and his naïvely optimistic views towards not only the South’s cause, but war in general. Despite the three-quarter thrust, in the production the patriotic number was framed by the distance-creating black surround, and so spectators could very well have looked on this young man – engulfed as he was by the large

69 The recurring parade sequence was Prince’s idea and was inspired by Mary’s death on Confederate Memorial Day (Thomas Cott interview with Uhry and Brown).

70 Brown and Uhry 239.

71 Despite my (and Whittaker’s) analysis of this song’s role in depicting a sympathetic Southern people, productions continue to stage it as though an indictment of the South. In one recent production at the University of Central Florida, an actress was utilized onstage to represent Lila, and when she approached the Young Soldier to comfort him, he angrily pushed her away, continuing to sing vehemently of the North and what “they’ve wrought”.

72 Brown and Uhry 240.

stage and enormous tree – as a kind of living history. The song itself, on the other hand, works subversively, subtly foreshadowing tragedy, for the Northerners will in fact “pay for what they’ve wrought” through Leo’s imminent death. It also works to emotionally captivate through its stirringly patriotic lyrics and music (though it is also potentially disturbing when considered topically in regards to similar contemporary wars).73 But while the production’s initial staging of the Young Soldier maintained some of the number’s subtle subversiveness despite stage-framing set devices and the ever-present tree, the staging of the second half of the number was blatant in its symbolism. The parade that crossed in the middle of the first number indicated that fifty years had passed (which was made clear by the Young Soldier’s transformation into the Old Soldier), while simultaneously indicating a denial of the South’s loss of the war as well as its refusal to surrender the antebellum belief in a prideful, hierarchical society.74 The distancing effect of this staging seemed to imply that spectators were not meant to empathize with the Southerners, thereby allowing that their sympathy could be more fully given to the Franks. The parade appeared all the way upstage (far behind the Soldier), achieving the most physical distance possible between the proud Southern people and the audience, a segregation which was further emphasized by the placement of a scrim in front of the parade.75 What is more, the stately parade consisted of approximately twenty floats carrying both actors and cardboard cutouts of silhouettes – including elegant Southern belles, one-legged veterans, and Georgia’s proud governor – many of whom carried signs with declarations such as “You live in the greatest city in the world, let’s make it the cleanest and the healthiest.”76 And though during the proud anthem’s final few verses, a crowd of townspeople assembled onstage to sing next to the Old Soldier, the stage picture consisted of stoic and rather stiff Georgians standing downstage underneath the foreboding oak tree, framed and distanced by the surround, as the surreal parade passed by behind them. I would argue that the majority of Broadway spectators might not have been able to connect to a people so far removed from themselves physically (onstage), historically, and even geographically (if they were native New Yorkers or otherwise from the North). The staging and design seemed to indicate that there was no honor in being Southern, but rather there was shame, as the looming old oak tree consistently reminded audiences of Southern racism while also strangely working to force sympathy onto the already inherently sympathetic protagonist. This effort to draw sympathy to the Franks and away from the Southerners occurred twice more in the production, at the beginning of the second act when the parade marked the passing of one year since the opening of the show (and little Mary’s death), and again in the final scene when, just after Leo’s lynching, the parade passed behind a grieving

73 In chapter four I will more fully develop how “The Old Red Hills of Home” works subversively within the musical, as well as how it is more effectively utilized in the London production.

74 Many Southern cities including Atlanta still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day.

75 This can also be seen as attempting to replicate the noir convention of the long shot, which is utilized in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, a film which Brown referenced as an inspiration for Parade.

76 Benedict Nightingale, “Virtue Rains on this Parade,” rev. of Parade, Vivian Beaumont Theater, The London Times 29 Dec. 1998, Features.

Lucille.77 This final parade featured a float carrying the newly elected Governor Dorsey (the lawyer who prosecuted Leo just a short time ago), Tom Watson, and the Old Soldier (one of Leo’s lynchers). The production again emphasized how worthy of sympathy Lucille was at this point and how little worthy her Southern neighbors were. The distancing of the audience was interrupted once in a revelatory moment that proved how Parade could work effectively if such a technique was utilized consistently throughout the show. The Broadway production’s staging of the trial that concludes the first act hinged on an overwhelming change of perspective accomplished in the production by a rearrangement of scenery in clear view of the audience. The trial began with Frank and the lawyers seated at tables stage left, positioned in front of a bleacher unit that sat all the trial spectators, while the judge’s bench and witness box were situated stage right, with the courtroom doors at center stage. The courtroom remained situated like this for the first six (out of nine) musical numbers of the trial. When it was time for Jim Conley (the black janitor whose suspicious testimony ultimately sealed Frank’s fate) to take the stand, the lights darkened severely as the set moved to allow Jim a more prominent place from which to give his testimony. As Conley (Rufus Bonds) became more and more comfortable on the stand during the accusatory number, “That’s What He Said” – to the point of obviously enjoying the unusual power he had in that moment as a black man casting doubt on a white man, with white spectators hanging on his every word – and the music reached its frantic climax, the jury box appeared (it had not been seen before) and traveled downstage center, and the bleacher of spectators and the lawyers’ tables moved offstage left. Simultaneously, with their removal, identical sets of crowd seating and lawyers’ tables entered from stage right, which created a kind of reverse angle that one would see in film. Designer Hernandez explains: “It’s like a movie – [Prince] wanted to create different angles for the trial. He wanted a kind of 360° movement where, in the first half of the sequence, we, the audience, are the jury.”78 This concept continued through Leo’s heartfelt statement (“It’s Hard to Speak My Heart”), during which Brent Carver (Leo) left the witness box and stood next to the overpowering tree where his character’s stoic exterior finally crumbled to reveal an exposed and very frightened man. With a painfully vulnerable air, he walked toward the jury, arm outstretched, and quivering, barely audibly sang, “These people try to scare you / With things I’ve never said.”79 But it was not until the last few lines of the song that he walked toward the audience, and while frightened, he sincerely and directly sang to the spectators in the Beaumont, “I stand before you now / Incredibly afraid. / I pray you understand.” 80 It was this powerful

77 Jason Robert Brown, “Sound Blog #9: The Parade Hotspot,” Jason Robert Brown 23 May 2007, 24 May 2007 < http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2007/05/sound_blog_9_the_parade_hot_sp.php>. In this blog, Brown reveals that Prince wished to go even further with what Brown refers to as Prince’s affinity for Brechtian “dialectic theatre”: In act two’s opening, when Britt Craig narrated what had occurred in the previous year, Prince wanted Craig to explain how his dispatches were being picked up across the country. To accompany Craig’s narration, Prince planned to reveal one of the floats to be carrying Northerners who were mocking the Southerners, who they regarded as ignorant. Regarding this idea, Brown notes, “No matter how artfully I wrote it, it would be arch and cold. Hal was really excited about it, though, so I took a shot. I hated it then, I hate it now, I’m glad it got cut.”

78 Barbour 46.

79 Brown and Uhry 297.

80 Brown and Uhry 297.

moment that demonstrated how successful this staging choice for the trial was because it allowed spectators to engage both emotionally (with Frank) and intellectually (as members of the jury), thereby serving to demonstrate how Prince might have wanted to create this effect throughout the production. Though Prince and Hernandez believed that the Beaumont audience became the jury only when the jury was not physically present onstage, I believe they were mistaken. It was in Frank’s final plea made directly to the audience that spectators were asked to empathize with someone onstage. For those few seconds, Brent Carver’s Leo offered the audience a window into the show, humbly convincing them to side with Leo, which may have served to overcome all the distancing problems previously mentioned. Unfortunately, the moment was all too brief. Just as quickly as he opened up to the audience, Carver’s Frank retreated into himself once again. As the jury – consisting of one actor as foreman and ten cardboard cutouts as the remaining jurors – one-by-one began declaring their votes of “guilty,” the stage was washed out in near darkness, and the townspeople celebrated the verdict in an eerily jubilant cakewalk. The staging of Leo’s statement briefly allowed spectators to bridge the gap between themselves and the action onstage, but it was in Leo’s obvious favor, while the Southern jurors (not allowed the reverence of being represented by actual actors) were stationed upstage, physically boxed off from the audience. With the exception of Leo’s brief and direct engagement with the audience, the production maintained its forceful, distancing concept. The more didactic directorial choices are certainly not to be blamed for all of the Broadway production’s problems, but because Prince maintained a heavy hand in deciding what did and did not appear in the libretto and score, and instead of tackling what I believe are the most problematic elements of the original text – stock-like characters, overwhelming amounts of information – his artistic choices seemed to highlight them. Rather than emphasizing Leo’s development into a vulnerable man and demonstrative husband, the production capitalized on his fastidious and prejudiced nature. Instead of recognizing the hardships that the Southerners’ experienced due to war and urbanization, and then as a result, portraying them as a defeated people attempting to cope with a rapidly changing society, the most unpleasant aspects of their nature were emphasized, causing their honor and pride to appear ridiculous and offensive. Even the tree itself visualized the worst of human nature, persistently reminding spectators of the lynching and the set that was framed by a jail cell. Musicals have been able to advantageously employ similar stylistic techniques, as demonstrated by productions such as Mark Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock (1937), but such productions rely on a cohesion of direction, design, music, and book. This cohesion did not appear to occur with Parade, which ostensibly resulted in confusion and a consequent distancing of spectators from the musical’s story. A final note on this production is required to show that a different directorial concept could have made Parade a more approachable piece for audiences. The Broadway premiere allowed some warmth and easy empathy through Carolee Carmello’s performance as the affectionate, engaging, and shattered wife, Lucille. In the closing scene, as the parade that was essentially celebrating her husband’s death passed behind her, she turned, as though seeing something in the distance, and through her tears, smiled.81 But this moment of uplift was fleeting, and immediately blotted out by the final blackout. To focus on such moments would have been to distract the audience from the insistent, instructive concept. Including other subtle moments like this throughout the production, however, would have opened up the show to

81 This moment is indicated in the stage direction of both published librettos as well as in the video taped performance available for viewing at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

spectators by allowing them more opportunities to empathize with its characters and situations, which ideally would then lead into the spectators actively engaging with the piece not only on an emotional level, but an intellectual one as well. Only once did the production seem to implicate the audience, as though to say, “Yes, this could easily be YOU today, sitting as a juror for just such a trial.” Instead of allowing spectators into the show, permitting them to actually see themselves in these characters – none of which are entirely good or bad despite – the production refused to admit them, using a varying degree of techniques to distance and instruct. Could a more open directorial style draw out some hope and sympathy from the book and score or was Parade meant as the (ineffective) indictment that Prince ultimately staged? These questions would not be answered until nearly nine years later when Parade received its London premiere.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE BROADWAY PRODUCTION

We spent the last couple of weeks waiting the show out and seeing if it would sell, seeing if the word-of-mouth would improve, but it just didn’t. . . . The Times didn’t print just one bad review; after [Ben] Brantley’s review, [Vincent] Canby wrote a bad review of the show. And then after Canby’s bad review, it was referred to about four times by other reviewers. They really enjoyed kicking us. – Jason Robert Brown82

If Brantley hadn’t slaughtered the show, it would have run over a year and then gone on the road to the major cities, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago. If your show is Grease, The New York Times review doesn’t matter; but with a show like Parade, the Times had better like it. But the Times did not like our show. – Hal Prince83

Introduction: The New York Tradition

In New York, there exists an almost tangible hostility towards critics, and no one experiences this open resentment more than the chief critic of The New York Times. There is a widely held belief that it is he or she who can “make or break” any given show. Clive Barnes, the Times theatre critic from 1967-1977, observes this impressive power of New York’s biggest newspaper: “It’s very difficult to understand the power of The New York Times, unless you are a native New Yorker. It’s like a bible to New Yorkers. . . . It’s not so much that plays will die by what is written about them (some do, a certain kind of plays [sic]). It’s the general perception that that’s true, and the pressure put on one is quite remarkable.” 84 But why do the American critics, especially the chief critic of the Times, hold such power? Theatre critic and historian Kalina Stefanova-Peteva suggests, as do many of the critics she interviewed, that it is the high ticket costs; New Yorkers are looking for reasons not to go to theatre, and a thumbs down from the Times critic releases them from the obligation of spending $100 on a show that there is a reasonable chance they will not enjoy. The Times is viewed by artists and critics alike as quite capable of shutting down a show with a single mixed or negative review, and readers are well aware of this. The impact and reputation of the Times, combined with the multitudes of sources the average theatergoer can reference before attending the theatre – newspapers, magazines, websites – creates theatre criticism that is largely utilized as a consumer guide in America. Frank Rich, chief critic of The New York Times from 1980-1994, explains why he believes

82 Qtd. in Bryer 45.

83 Qtd. in Hirsch 223.

84 Barnes, qtd. in Kalina Stefanova-Peteva, ed., Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages? (Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993) 79. Unless otherwise indicated, one can assume that all futher quotes in this chapter from Stefanova-Peteva will be from this source.

American criticism operates in this capacity: “The reason for that [the critic’s] influence has not to do only with theater or theater criticism. It has to do with the whole American commercialization of everything. The fact is that people don’t buy a toaster without reading a review of it, or cars, or books, or anything. So theater, sadly, is not able to escape this.” 85 Stefanova-Peteva concludes that this role of American criticism leads to reviews that are not only written exclusively for the audience, but are then supposed to be written from the average theatergoer’s point of view.86 Because of this approach to criticism, many New York critics do not view their criticism as a tool to aid practitioners and art, but as a largely separate entity, perhaps even its own art.87 Of course there are others who believe themselves to be contributing to a larger critical discourse that ideally assists audiences in becoming more perceptive and informed spectators as well aids as the evolution of the art itself.88 Regardless of ideals, however, almost all acknowledge that American criticism functions primarily as a publicity tool and consumer guide. American criticism’s consumer function must be kept in mind when analyzing critiques of Parade. While it is impossible to know when critics are speaking for themselves or on behalf of the average theatergoer, the fact that both critics and practitioners acknowledge theatrical criticism’s role as a publicity tool informs every American critic’s work, no matter his or her personal attitude and ideals. It is equally important, however, that these critics’ specific observations and analyses are carefully considered in regards to their specific insights, because in addition to any consumer-oriented role that criticism may have, critics’ educated observations help to shape larger discussions of the musical form. New York critics, however, possess one great advantage over other (American) critics in regards to musical theatre. As an inherently American art form, the musical infiltrates Broadway, as in any given season more musicals are presented than any other form of theatre. Regardless of their theatrical preferences, these critics have experienced the wide range of the form – classic musical comedies, revues, movies-turned-musicals, jukebox musicals, megamusicals, and of course, those of the New Voices. This consistent exposure to the ever- evolving form aids in the development of New York critics who are generally more informed about musical theatre’s wide-ranging styles, subjects, and voices than their critical counterparts overseas.

85 Qtd. in Stefanova-Peteva 85.

86 Stefanova-Peteva xvi.

87 Critic Clive Barnes declares, “Obviously criticism is not meant for the artist. It’s a private conversation between the reader and the critic,” while Michael Feingold states, “I don’t believe theater criticism has any role in the process of making theater. I don’t think it should. It should exist primarily as an art in itself, and the process of making theater should be dealt with by the theater artists and the audience, and there should be no interference” (qtd. in Stefanova-Peteva 57-8).

88 John Simon believes, “The critic is a part of the theater – a functional, helpful, necessary part – and it’s his wish to make the theater better,” while Alisa Soloman muses, “It’s sort of a Brechtian idea: if people practice critical thinking about the world, when they go to the theater, talk about the theater, think about the theater, that enables them to think critically about the world itself. Criticism in some utopian world should contribute to that. . . . Does it do that in America? Of course not. It’s functioning as a consumer guide” (Stefanova-Peteva 63-4).

By the time Parade opened at the close of 1998, critics were well exposed to the New Voices.89 Did Parade then appear as “just another” serious musical in a string of such musicals? To determine if this exposure helped or hindered Parade’s reception, I have gathered nineteen reviews of the Broadway production, as well as two reviews of the cast recording (the latter’s value will be explained later). Close analysis of these reviews reveals the critics’ general lack of surprise at Parade’s disturbing topic, which did not seem an issue for the majority of them. Many, however, appeared overwhelmed and even bored by the sheer abundance of these darker musicals that populated New York in the ’90s. This chapter will demonstrate, however, that it was the tone, design, and staging (compounded, of course, by the problems with the book) more than a boredom with style that dissociated spectators, including experienced theatergoers (critics), from Parade. Even more critically, I will show that within these mixed reviews, the majority of critics failed to distinguish between the production and the work itself. Though they generally agreed that Parade did not work, critics never agreed, or clarified, on why it did not. Because of this lack of clarification, directorial choices were generally credited for any positive element, while the book and score were deemed largely responsible for the show’s major failings despite often being lauded individually. Arguably, many original works (whether musical or not) may suffer or benefit from the critics’ conflation of the work’s values with its production values, and in the case of Parade, such a conflation labeled the show a failed musical – rather than a failed production. As previously stated, few critics expressed surprise or distress at Parade’s dark subject matter, most even supporting Parade’s serious effort by citing examples of similarly dark musicals that were successful (such as Sweeney Todd and Cabaret), and most, such as both of the New York Times’s top critics, found a musicalization of the Leo Frank case “promising,” while the remaining others, such as British-born Clive Barnes of the New York Post, more adamantly declared that it “could be some kind of watershed, a sort of defining moment in the hopefully ongoing story of Broadway musical theater.”90 Despite these pronouncements about the show’s potential (seemingly based on both subject matter and the assembled creative team), almost all critics found Uhry’s book troubling, particularly the details he chose or chose not to include. Oddly, the critics could not agree on whether the book was too focused or not focused enough in regards to what issues or aspects are most significant to the case. Barnes declared that Parade “is not a masterpiece [because] it’s too diffuse,” which was seconded by The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold who observed, “The hard part is trying to figure out what subject the musical’s makers think they’re treating.”91 The New York Times’s Ben Brantley, on the other hand, stated, “One thing Parade cannot be accused of is fuzziness of focus.” So which was it? And did those like Brantley find the musical too focused or was it the production itself? To determine how the

89 See chapter one for a full account of these new works and their general reception in the ’90s.

90 Vincent Canby, “Pedigree Versus Play: The Mystery of Parade,” rev. of Parade, The New York Times 27 Dec. 1998, final ed., sec. 2: 5. Ben Brantley, “Martyr’s Requiem Invokes Justice,” rev. of Parade, New York Times 18 Dec. 1998, final ed.: E1. Clive Barnes, “Parade Passes Muster,” rev. of Parade, New York Post 27 Dec. 1998: 33. Only the first quote of a critic’s review will be cited in this way. Unless I quote another work of the critic’s in this chapter, the reader can assume all quotes are from the initially cited review.

91 Michael Feingold, “Rites of Man,” rev. of Parade, Village Voice 29 Dec. 1998: 137.

critics came to be so divided about the focus of the book, I have pinpointed the elements they found problematic and have attempted to determine their reasoning. One issue that seemed to divide critics was Parade’s method of relaying its complex story. While none scoffed at the musical form’s ability to do so, they did, however, disagree on how effectively Parade relayed the Frank case. A few, such as The Associated Press’s Michael Kuchwara, positively viewed the book as “a spare and unemotional condensation of a complicated saga,” and In Theater’s Ken Mandelbaum similarly declared Uhry’s scenes “pungent [and] economic in their detail yet always vivid.”92 Even New York Magazine’s John Simon, notorious for his harsh, blunt criticism, uncharacteristically raved about Parade, pinpointing the book as “consistently apt and gripping. It gamely tackles a complex and sprawling subject, neither oversimplifying nor forfeiting cohesiveness. It enlightens without preachment, and lets the dramatic or ironic prose merge seamlessly with the musical numbers.”93 The vast majority, however, found a wide range of problems within the book, including (too many) stereotyped characters, undeveloped issues, inaccurate information, and even a lack of highly relevant information. Two stated that Jim Conley’s (likely) guilt and the child labor issue were not thoroughly explored, another felt Leo’s selection as a suspect was not entirely explained, and another found the depiction of Atlanta “formulaic and shallow,” inaccurately reading “The Old Red Hills of Home” as portraying the city as a “place psychotically nostalgic and savoring hysterical parades.”94 The complaints were so varied that a couple of critics arrived at the point of demanding the impossible: the book should thoroughly cover every facet of the case, including Mary Phagan’s home life, the local Jewish community’s response to the case, and who exactly supported Tom Watson, the zealous anti-Semite.95 While these last issues, raised in this instance by the erudite Feingold, are most certainly intriguing and entirely relevant in a discussion of the case’s history, even the most efficient musical (or play or film, for that matter) has not the time to include everything in two hours. More significantly, a complete exploration of the case was not the chief intention of the creators, as Uhry explains: “It’s a story about real life, but this is not a history lesson. I have no wish to instruct anyone.”96 If Uhry’s main intention was not to shed light on the intricacies of the case, why then did so many critics focus on the historical issues, rather than what the creators viewed as the actual focus – the love story? Furthermore, if the musical’s relation of the case was so problematic,

92 Kuchwara, Michael. “Musical Parade Gets It Right.” Rev. of Parade. Associated Press 17 Dec. 1998. The Official Website of Jason Robert Brown. 31 Oct. 2007 . Ken Mandelbaum, rev. of Parade, In Theater 11 Jan. 1998: 18-19.

93 John Simon, “Trial and Eros,” rev. of Parade, New York 4 Jan. 1999: 68-9.

94 Respectively: George Dorris, rev. of Parade, Show Music 15 (1999): 18-19. Charles Isherwood, rev. of Parade, Variety 18 Dec. 1998. 31 Oct. 2006 . Donald Lyons, “Carver, Carmello Lead a Wrenching Parade,” rev. of Parade, New York Post 18 Dec. 1998: 58.

95 Feingold 137.

96 Qtd. in Simi Horowitz, “After the ‘Ballyhoo’ – Comes the ‘Parade,’” Back Stage 39 (1998): 51-2.

how was it that the critics did not agree on what made the book deficient? If my own analysis of the Broadway production is correct, the answer to why the critics’ analysis of the book and its problems was so scattered and hypercritical is that the stylized and didactic staging refused spectators entrance into the more personal aspects of the musical, rather than drawing them into the story through the emotional and trying experience of the Franks and the Southerners’ pains and difficulties in a changing time. Because of this distancing effect, the spectators (including critics) were placed into the roles of outsiders, viewing a distant and largely one-sided history, rather than recognizing the parallels between the Franks’ world and their own. While the use of techniques resembling those of early Epic theatre indicated that this effect might have been desired, critics did not appear to recognize that it may have been the directorial choice of focus that was most problematic, and not necessarily the book itself. The scattered critical response and the critics’ lack of distinction between the musical itself and the production appeared again in the general response to the depiction of Parade’s many characters. I have already elaborated on the problems produced by the litany of characters employed in the musical, and many of the critics were similarly quick to point out this overabundance, such as Canby who stated that “except for Leo and Lucille, Parade is populated by characters who could have been ordered from a catalogue.” Many subsequently noted that such a huge cast of characters leaves little room for proper character development, and this then accounts for the critics’ frequent allusion to all characters excepting the Franks as “villains.”97 Such an allusion also leads to only three critics mentioning, but never coming to grips with, the cardboard figures utilized in the parades and jury. Newsday’s Linda Winer states, “Some of the people on the floats are cardboard cutouts, and, for a while, we fear the characters will share their dimensions. Soon, however, the characters begin to take life . . .”98 Winer is one of a few critics who responded positively to the depiction of the characters as a whole, stating that she did eventually view them as fully rounded. Despite this positive view of the production’s characterizations, Winer did not account for, nor hint at, the cardboard figures’ possible use. She only “fear[ed]” that the characters would share their lack of dimensionality, indicating both a desire for fully psychologized characters, as well as perhaps a confusion as to why the cutouts were utilized to begin with. That Winer did not acknowledge, for whatever reason, a possible intention for the cutouts, ostensibly demonstrates that at least some spectators were unclear as to the meaning and value of such an instructional technique as employed in this production. Critics, through their consistent notation of the great number of “villains” and “catalog characters,” as well as their seeming confusion regarding the staging and its possible reference to didactic methods of earlier theatrical styles, suggested that this stylized instructional concept was ineffective. In the process of discussions of characters, they then revealed a disinclination, or inability, to fully distinguish between Parade’s direction, text, and musical score. These staging choices, especially the cardboard cutouts, also seemed to affect how critics viewed the Franks’ storyline, giving an apparent prominence to a sudden rise in the romantic emphasis in the plot. One of the other critics to mention the cardboard Southerners was The New York Times’s chief critic Ben Brantley who declared that, with the exception of Carolee

97 Kuchwara and Isherwood, for example, explicitly reference the abundance of “villains,” while Dorris, Stearns, and Zoglin refer to stereotyped characters.

98 Linda Winer-Bernheimer, “Cumulative Mastery Is Grand Marshal of Parade,” rev. of Parade, Newsday 25 Dec. 1998, sunrise ed.: E05.

Carmello (Lucille Frank), “all of the actors in Parade appear claustrophobically trapped in [a] mural. It is sometimes hard to distinguish them from the two-dimensional cutout figures used to fill out the crowd scenes in Riccardo Hernandez’s visually arresting but oddly distancing set.”99 Brantley’s observation may explain why most critics made a point of mentioning that Leo and Lucille were the only well-developed or emotionally engaging characters. Because the staging techniques seemed to desire that audiences not connect with any of the characters except the Franks, Leo and Lucille stood out to critics as the only characters available for audience empathy. Due to this (and the publicity materials, which a few critics did reference), most critics, like the creators, labeled the developing romance the core of the musical, but deplored its depiction as being too little, too late. Brantley went one step further, arguing that by the time the Franks’ duet “All the Wasted Time” occurred at the end of the second act, “You suddenly feel you’ve been given emotional entry to a show that has determinedly kept you outside of it.” Brantley’s fellow Times writer, Canby, agreed, stating, “It is typical of Parade that they seem to fall in love only late in the show and offstage,” and The New Yorker’s John Lahr declared, “In musicals, love usually finds a way,” but that with the Franks’ second act duet, “love arrives too late to save the show.”100 Most American critics are aware of the romantic convention within the form and so their complaints did not arise because they demanded such a convention to be utilized in Parade, but because until well into the second act, the Broadway production appeared to operate on a different set of conventions (early Epic and noir staging and design), seemingly avoiding an emphasis on romance traditionally associated with musicals. When critics were then confronted with the romantic tradition in act two, they all took the time to comment on its presence. Some were pleasantly surprised, grasping onto the warmth the romance provided as a brief reprieve from an otherwise dark show. It was not, however, that all critics were bothered by the musical’s general darkness, as New York Daily News’s Fintan O’Toole, an Irish-born drama and literary critic (as well as a historian and political commentator), demonstrated by poking fun at those who were making a fuss over the musical’s serious subject matter. He would then go on to positively state that due to the musical’s serious topic (which he liked), he found the development of the romance “much more moving for being so unlikely.”101 USA Today’s David Patrick Stearns, a classical music and theatre critic, similarly and positively noted, “The show’s gradual dramatic crescendo doesn’t peak until well into Act II,” in which the Franks’ duet shines as a “supremely powerful moment.”102 The reason that all critics highlighted the romance does not appear to be due to any expectations of the romantic convention. Rather, the second act of the musical allows more time to the development of the Franks in general, which would not necessarily have been problematic (see chapters four and five on the London production) or even

99 Ben Brantley, “Martyr’s Requiem Invokes Justice,” rev. of Parade, New York Times 18 Dec. 1998, final ed.: E1.

100 John Lahr, “Ancient and Modern: The fresh drama of Electra, a new musical, and a glimpse of Kidman,” rev. of Parade, The New Yorker 28 Dec. and 4 Jan. 1999: 135-7.

101 Fintan O’Toole, “A Parade of Humanity,” rev. of Parade, Daily News 18 Dec. 1998: 75.

102 David Patrick Stearns, “Parade Pointedly in Step with Today,” rev. of Parade, USA Today 18 Dec. 1998, final ed.: 4E.

noteworthy if the staging and direction helped to fill out the other characters in the first act. The production’s didactic staging techniques, however, with their heavy reliance on the two- dimensionality of the Southern characters, drew inordinate focus on the scenes between Leo and Lucille, as they were the only characters that the staging allowed spectators to emotionally engage with. Another aspect of character development commented upon by the critics can also be attributed to the production’s staging. The unbalanced development of characters – arguably due to the moral conviction of Parade’s creators that Frank was innocent – extended to the critical reception of the character of Leo Frank. Because focus was on the Franks due to their fuller development (as opposed to other characters) in the production, Leo generally suffered from scrutinizing critics. Divided, half of the critics latched onto Leo as the victim of ignorance that the staging highlighted, and they protested that he was not sympathetic enough, nor fully developed enough, to warrant such a martyr-like portrayal. Back Stage’s David Sheward noted the “colorlessness” of Frank and remarked that “we never get to see more than a horrified victim,”103 while Time magazine’s Richard Zoglin observed that, as with the employment of the two-dimensional Southerners, some “digressions into cliché” – such as Frank’s lawyer – were “annoying.”104 “To bolster Frank’s status as a victim,” he negatively commented, “his lawyer is portrayed as a clueless Southern blowhard.” Charles Isherwood of Variety (who would be taken on a few years later by the Times as its second-string theatre critic) commented that the role was “probably factually impeccable but unsympathetic.” While some, like Kuchwara, believed that Frank eventually “earns our respect and even our admiration,” most, like Feingold, negatively viewed the representation of Frank as “no more than a modular spare part.” As Brantley put it, Parade possessed an “innately sympathetic hero, undoubtedly worthy of our tears. But for those tears to flow, we have to get to know Leo Frank as a man, not a symbol,” which he claimed this production did not accomplish. The vast majority of critics recognized the one-sided, instructional quality of the arguably heavy-handed production, and that Frank’s character was almost solely portrayed as a victim in order to support the show’s basic goal of relaying a case of prejudice. The problem remained, however, that despite the inclusion of an innately sympathetic protagonist (the unjustly persecuted Frank), critics still essentially lacked empathy for all the musical’s characters, including Frank. Beyond that, they failed to distinguish the part the directorial choices had in accomplishing such didacticism and distancing onstage. The critics’ general lack of distinguishing which elements of the musical or production created specific effects becomes most obvious in their critiques of the elements (music, choreography) inherent to the musical. Only a handful of critics mentioned, in passing, Patricia Birch’s choreography, and they did so to no real significance. As Parade is a mostly sung- through musical, they could not help but discuss the role Brown’s score played in telling the story, and they appeared to be split down the middle on its effectiveness. The responses to the music by the Voice’s Feingold and Variety’s Isherwood best articulate the generally conflicted reaction of critics who responded favorably to Brown’s music. Feingold noted, “Jason Robert Brown’s skillful and often likable songs fit awkwardly into the grim story,” while Isherwood

103 David Sheward, rev. of Parade, Back Stage 1 Jan. 1999: 30.

104 Richard Zoglin, “The Case Against Leo: An Infamous Lynching Becomes a Somber Musical,” rev. of Parade, Time 28 Dec. 1998, 9 Oct. 2006 .

similarly stated, “Though the appeal of Brown’s music is undeniable . . . it’s hard to take unalloyed pleasure in a score that so thoroughly depicts human mendacity, stupidity, opportunism and cruelty.” These generally negative descriptions of the music’s use within the show accompany positive responses to the music itself, which the critics seem to find “pleasurable.” Because none of the critics explain what exactly he or she finds pleasurable about the music, it is not clear whether it is actually the music that does not fit the story or the production that does not fit the music. If the songs are “skillful,” for example, how are they also “awkward”? While the word “awkward” is used negatively by Feingold, could it not also indicate a successful use of music depending on the dramatic situation utilized and the tone and feeling that the composer wished to produce?105 Such a stark contrast between the tone of the music and that of the production could work to the success of a production seemingly utilizing stylized Epic theatre techniques. The comments surrounding the music’s “pleasing melodies” (as Canby referred to them), however, imply that though the music did stand out against the severe presentation of the case, such a complete contrast did not work effectively for critics. These comments indicate a confusion (or lack of definition) regarding the “pleasurable” aspects of music, but also a seeming failure to recognize that perhaps it was the directorial choices, not the music, that did not compliment Parade’s story. Some of the critics who found the music effectively engaging implied that Parade “works better on disc,” as David A. Rosenberg directly stated in his Back Stage review of Parade’s original Broadway cast recording. Rosenberg’s reason for this was that, in the theatre, the musical was “buried under a dreary libretto.”106 If Rosenberg and other admiring critics recalled Uhry’s previous works, including Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, they perhaps would have suspected that all the “grimness” of Parade did not result solely from the libretto, but perhaps also from the directorial choices, such as the surreal parades, cardboard jury, and the heavily symbolic designs. Instead of supporting the more subtle aspects of the score (as discussed in the previous chapter, as well as in the next), the production suppressed the music through didactic staging. This is supported by the critics’ nearly unanimous approval of Leo’s musical trial number, “Come Up to My Office.” Here, Brent Carver’s Leo, in a highly theatrical fantasy sequence, became the pedophile the factory girls have been accusing him of being. The Times’s critics agreed: Brantley found the number “all-too-brief,” and Canby viewed it as “a flash of lightning” that “briefly lights up the show’s murky landscape to allow you to see all that Parade hasn’t achieved so far, and won’t achieve again. Among other things, it also permits the audience to acknowledge for the first time the dimensions of Brent Carver’s fine performance as Leo.” I would like to suggest that while Canby was referring to the combination of the book and music as the “murky landscape,” that the actual reason Leo’s vaudeville number stood out was because it existed as one of a very few moments that the production allowed the musical to speak for itself without any heavy-handed directorial additions. With all but Carver and the factory girls hidden from view, the spectators were not just seeing Carver’s dimensions as an actor for the first time, they were also admitted an all-too-brief moment to view the three- dimensionality of Leo as Uhry and Brown had conceived him through words and music. Had

105 Kurt Weill’s musical techniques in The Three Penny Opera, for example, are used to jar the audience, constantly reminding spectators that they are watching a play, and not reality.

106 David A. Rosenberg, “Passionate Parade,” rev. of Parade, Original Broadway Cast Recording, RCA Victor, 1999, Back Stage 4 Jun. 1999: 43.

critics analyzed precisely why this musical number stood out to them as one of few truly effective moments within the show, they also may have recognized that if the other numbers were less weighted down with symbolic staging, Parade could then be wholly effective. The remaining critics who did not favor Parade’s music are well represented by John Simon who stated that Brown’s score “seldom rises above the serviceable. It is not derivative and does advance the plot.” While every critic believed the score effective in its traditional role of advancing the plot, the vast majority found it lacking in some kind of transcendent quality. Writing a summary of the ’98-’99 season for the (now defunct) musical theatre magazine Show Music, Ken Mandelbaum disagreed with this general view that the music was lacking, stating, “Many of the reviews for Parade treated the show as if it were a straight play, dissecting its political messages and failing utterly to come to grips with the music.” 107 He went on to declare Brown’s work “unfailingly theatrical; if he uses country or gospel sounds, he invariably transforms them into genuine theatre music. . . . The songs often have the shape and structure of operatic arias, and Brown’s music is sophisticated and remarkably accomplished for one so young.” Both Mandelbaum and Rosenberg’s reviews of the cast recording referred to the fact that one may need to hear Parade more than once to fully appreciate the intricacies and theatricality of the score, suggesting that any production of Parade must be sensitive to the subtleties of Brown’s music, which did not always appear to be the case with the Broadway production. Dorris also mentioned a second hearing as a possible necessity when he asserted that “Brown’s very Sondheimesque score [is not] strong enough to create the emotional world lacking in the book.” While Dorris stereotypically associates a general coldness and/or lack of emotion with Sondheim, Canby also alluded to that composer-lyricist’s complex work when he stated that Brown’s lyrics “aren’t easy to listen to.” Lest one forget, Sondheim’s music, known for its complex rhythms and tendency towards the atonal, was not always warmly embraced by critics who longed for the appealing melodies and eloquently simple lyrics of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical. Yet today, Sondheim is generally considered one of the most well respected musical composers, causing one to assume a comparison to his complexity would work in Brown’s favor. Brantley, however, continued the negative comparison in his Times review, remarking that Brown’s songs “keep you at an intellectual remove,” a criticism often reserved for Sondheim (as well as Michael John LaChiusa, another of the New Voices). Brown explains what he feels to be an inaccurate assessment of his music, asserting that Brantley doesn’t have a musical ear; he’s sort of tone-deaf. Most of the emotional content of Parade by design, is musical; it’s subtextual . . . Many critics are not equipped to hear musicals that way. When these people walk in to see a musical, it’s supposed to be very on-your-sleeve and obvious. Musicals are not noted for their intellectual subtlety . . . There are different kinds of critics and the one at the Times is the sort of critic who likes his musicals to be like “musicals.” But I don’t think that’s any different from the majority of the readership, so it’s hard to fault him for that.108 What Brown says may be true, but one certainly need not be a trained musician to appreciate a skillful score and obtain at least a general understanding of its part in developing characters and

107 Ken Mandelbaum, “On Stage,” Show Music 15 (Spring 1999): 15+.

108 Qtd. in Bryer, Jackson R. and Richard A. Davison, ed., The Art of the American Musical (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005) 44.

themes. Knowing that most of these critics are musically untrained, the fact that the majority acknowledged that the music, whether as “Sondheim-esque” or not, worked to advance the plot proves Brown’s score largely effective. And because a handful of these musically untrained critics declared the music to be theatrical and moving, it could then be argued that equally untrained spectators could just as easily have recognized the merits of the score had the staging not gotten in the way of their reception of the music. Here then was another example of the critics not distinguishing the potential of the work (the musical score) from the effects of the production choices. The oddly mixed critical reactions to the score could certainly be partially due to the drawing of focus of the production’s stylized staging and design as almost all critics mentioned the foreboding tree. Even more interesting than the responses to the music, though, were the occasional references from those critics who did discuss directorial choices (strangely, only a handful failed to do more than mention Prince’s name as director). When speaking of Prince, critics generally praised him without ever explaining what they viewed as his effective contributions to the show. Yet they often criticized elements of the show owing to directorial choices, whether or not they acknowledged or recognized Prince as accountable for these elements. The critic who most avoided pinpointing Prince, while simultaneously criticizing artistic choices clearly belonging to the director, was Ben Brantley. The Times critic’s aversion to the directorial vision of the show is best exemplified through his cynical observation of what he viewed as the design’s heavy-handed symbolism, which for him seemed to perpetually and unnecessarily draw focus: The tree is a sermon in itself. A big, sturdy oak with serpentine limbs, it’s the first thing the audience sees in Parade . . . The oak’s branches glow, in sinister abstraction, through a scrim before a single note is sung, and it will be a dominant presence throughout the evening, casting a metaphoric shadow that is both premonitory and admonitory. A man, a good man, will be hanged from that tree before Parade is over. It is the image of a brutally unfair fate awaiting its victim, and we are never, ever allowed to forget what it signifies. While Brantley seemed to resent the constant reminder of Frank’s fate and the relentlessly solemn tone that it created, the only finger he pointed in his review was towards Brown when he stated that the composer has a “tendency to use martial drumbeats and knell-like chords to underscore his melody lines, and the devices give the effect of someone continually whispering in your ear: ‘Look at what these people are doing to a blameless man. Just look.’” While out of context of the entire review these statements may seem to positively credit the production’s emphatic tone, Brantley’s description of the production’s insistence on Leo’s innocence and its constant reminders of the injustice that occurred, ultimately led him to his conclusion that “the result is more podium-thumping screed than compelling story.” Despite this assessment of the overall production, Brantley appeared largely to blame the score’s use of snare drum (in “The Old Red Hills of Home” that simultaneously alludes to both the recent war and Leo’s imminent walk to the gallows) for creating such a “relentlessly serious” production (as Isherwood also referred to it), rather than considering that the failure to create a consistently suspenseful and engaging show was the result of the combination of noir and didactic staging conventions. Brantley, unlike the vast majority of the critics, appeared to recognize both of these styles (noir and the resemblance to early Epic theatre) within the Broadway production. He referenced the cardboard figures, and he also referred to the obvious similarities to Hitchcockian “wrong man”

plots, but observed that the former created an odd distancing effect, while Parade’s use of the latter was ineffective because it failed to “admit you Kafka-style into the baffled, frightened mind of the persecuted or to sweep you up into the frenzy of the persecutors, making you feel vicariously implicated.” Despite these observations, Brantley seemed ill-inclined to credit them to directorial choices, preferring instead to point towards the music and libretto. Though he was careful never to directly place blame on the direction for any of the show’s failures, he did point to the direction various times in his critiques. His aversion to the didactically symbolic tree, as well as his assertion that because of Prince’s “use [of] the ensemble to create tableaux of tidal waves of crowds, in ways that recall the mob scenes in Evita, you never escape an overriding feeling of disdain, a chilly indignation,” indicates that he may have been criticizing the directorial concept as problematic and generally ineffective. Perhaps Brantley was hesitant in crediting the renowned Prince with what he viewed as mere “civics lesson.” In his review he wrote a paragraph celebrating the director’s hugely successful career revolutionizing American musical theatre, but he never made explicit what he felt about Prince’s work on Parade. Considering the power of the Times, Brantley’s virtual exclusion of a discussion of the director’s influence on the work (when approximately half of the critics lauded Prince’s direction without really expounding on what that direction accomplished) spoke volumes to potential theatergoers: Brantley protected Prince as the masterful director many perceive him to be, thereby showcasing the work itself as generally to blame for the production’s lack of intellectual and emotional engagement. Other critics were even less specific on the directorial input. The London Times’s Benedict Nightingale (the only London critic to review the Broadway production) complimented Prince, declaring that he “stages supremely well” in reference to the Brechtian parade with its signs and cardboard crowd, and yet later stated that the show disappointed “because it is the fruit of the mild, grey virtues: good taste, worthy moral feelings and, notably . . . political correctness.”109 The critical majority faulted Parade for an earnestness or gravity that they felt created a lack of, in Nightingale’s words, “power and emotional force.” Nightingale, however, showed almost nine years later that it was not necessarily the musical itself that lacked these key ingredients when he referred to the Donmar production as “powerful and engrossing” without a mention of a presence of any “mild, grey virtues.”110 While he still maintained that Sondheim “would have brought more dissonant excitement to the songs,” he praised the production for producing “a gathering intensity to Leo’s tale” that was presumably not present in the Broadway production (according to that review). Nightingale did not credit such an intensity to directorial choices, nor did he ever mention director Rob Ashford by name in his review of the Donmar production – yet he did mention Prince in that review. Why this strange failure to discuss the contributions of the director of the production that he found more effectively engaging (and conversely, why were the Broadway production’s directorial choices pinpointed as the only positive in a show that he deemed largely unsuccessful)? The directorial concept (combined with the few alterations to the libretto/score) surely would have had a significant hand in the success of the London production. Similar to Brantley, Nightingale seemed to avoid the

109 Benedict Nightingale, “Virtue Rains on this Parade,” rev. of Parade, Vivian Beaumont, The London Times 29 Dec. 1998, Features.

110 Benedict Nightingale, “Small-stage Setting Brings Intensity to Sombre Lament from the Deep South,” rev. of Parade, Donmar Warehouse, The London Times 26 Sept. 2007, Home News: 28.

possibility that the artistic choices made for the Broadway production produced those moralistic effects that he linked largely to the musical itself. Once again there remained a lack of distinction between what did and did not “work” within the musical and its Broadway production.

Conclusion: The Production vs. the Work

The general failure of the critics to differentiate between directorial contributions to Parade and potential of the musical itself is the most significant and worrying commonality between all of the criticisms. New York critics have seen musicals of all shapes, sizes, and varieties, and so it appeared difficult to surprise or distress them through choice of topic, nor did a difficult and (perhaps) unsympathetic lead character seem to particularly disturb them. What the majority of them did seem to find challenging, however, is the manner in which the story is musically told. In the case of Parade, this appears to be especially true if the director does not demonstrate his trust of the libretto and score by making directorial choices that support and compliment the musical style, rather than subvert it. Michael Feingold’s proclamation that “thick with fact, Uhry’s book is sparse on the kind of emotional information that could broaden out into song; the story and its people don’t invite singing, even of a somber kind,” was the most limiting declaration and stereotype of the musical form that I came across while reading Parade’s Broadway reviews. But knowing Feingold’s theatrical tastes are expansive and erudite, my initial reaction to his statement (that he was limiting and stereotyping the form) was weakened upon further analysis. Though his reference to the book as “thick with fact” is rather strange (considering his complaints of many issues that Uhry did not cover, it would seem that the book was not thick enough for him), the rest of his comment soon becomes clear, if not understandable, in context of the production itself. Feingold, like most critics, seemed to lean towards trusting the work of an experienced and renowned director, apparently believing that if the production was not successfully engaging, it must have been due to the qualities of the music itself. Instead of assigning what many critics referred to as a relentlessly grim, detached tone to the didactic staging and design, critics reserved most of their criticism for the book and score, while generally lauding those aspects individually. Never suggesting (with the exception of Nightingale) the possibility that another production could highlight Parade’s strengths and make it effectively engaging for audiences (either emotionally or intellectually, or both), only one critic, Clive Barnes, encouraged readers to make their own decisions when he stated, “See it. Watch it work.” While Ben Brantley wrote a carefully negative critique that only ambiguously stated to readers that they should not attend the production (indicated by his rather blatant cynicism regarding the work and its staging), his power as the The New York Times’s chief critic certainly had an effect on potential spectators’ attendance and perception of the show. Whether or not his review (compounded with the rest of the generally mixed to negative reviews and Livent’s bankruptcy) can be blamed for the premature closing of the Broadway production cannot be determined. Despite its mixed reception in New York, however, Parade would receive another chance from different critics with an entirely different set of expectations in London in the fall of 2007.

CHAPTER THREE

PARADE IN LONDON

This is a bittersweet experience, because the original production of Parade is imprinted so fiercely on my consciousness, and the fact that it was not greeted with the warmth and plaudits that I felt (and still feel) it deserved is brought back to me all the more resonantly every time I hear this dialogue and these songs. In one sense, yes, this does feel like a victory lap, a vindication of the show; in another, it feels like I've revived my baby only to drown it again. . . . I think that the relative failure of the Broadway production gives people a greater justification than usual to be wary of the show. Hopefully, whatever their attitude going in, the evidence of this production will persuade them. No matter what, I know we have the right team; there could not be a group of people better equipped to introduce this show to London. - Jason Robert Brown111

Much like Hal Prince did with Parade on Broadway, director Rob Ashford made his concept clear from the beginning of the London production. He acknowledged the disadvantages British audiences would have coming into this innately American musical, and he approached the piece accordingly. Rather than focusing entirely on the history of the Frank case – a history that one cannot guarantee that even Americans would be fully aware of – he shaped Parade’s London production into a work that heavily relied on the spectators’ abilities and willingness to view themselves as active members of the production while also engaging them emotionally. The Donmar’s production history and intimate space indicated that such a concept of audience implication would work and Ashford keenly exploited this approach. The creation of a new framing device in combination with significant double casting offered visual cues to spectators who were unfamiliar with the case, supporting what audiences would otherwise only hear aurally in the complex, multi-layered score. That is, in addition to aiding the development of the sober tone and signifying the location as turn-of-the-twentieth-century South, the music both builds on themes and then subverts them, and the London production supported this role through simple but direct design and staging choices that never appeared overwhelming. But beyond the clarification and intensification of the score’s many functions, this production of Parade, within the intimate Donmar, became an exercise in actor-audience connection, encouraging spectators to not only empathize with the characters, but also to think critically about them. Due to the fuller development of the characters (thanks partially to Brown and Uhry’s revisions of the score and libretto), as well as the characters’ direct address and alternating persuasive attempts at gaining the audience’s sympathies, this production afforded Parade the potential to connect, both emotionally and intellectually, with its audiences. This chapter will reveal the potential of Parade that was not entirely evident in its Broadway production by demonstrating how the different directorial choices employed in the London production supported the creators’ rewrites, the role of the musical score in the story’s development, and the use of a smaller space. To understand how the London production accomplished such an effective actor- audience relationship, one must first be aware of the reasons behind the Donmar’s decision to

111 Jason Robert Brown, “Notes from London,” Jason Robert Brown 25 Aug. 2007, 26 Nov. 2007 http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2007/08/notes_from_london.php.

take on Parade, as well as its history of producing other musicals and how the dynamics of its specific theatrical space contributed to those successes. The Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage had worked with choreographer Rob Ashford previously on his productions of Guys and Dolls and Evita, and because both were successful (Olivier-nominated) productions, Grandage decided that he would like to work with Ashford again, only this time he would step aside to let dancer-choreographer Ashford make his directorial debut. When approached to direct a show of his choice, Ashford, who both performed in and assistant choreographed Parade’s original Broadway production, immediately responded that he would like to take a shot at Parade, because he knew how to make it work.112 Also inherently helpful to the London production was the fact that, like bookwriter Alfred Uhry, Ashford grew up a Southerner, and so immediately recognized the challenge of bringing such a fundamentally American piece to the British stage. As he stated, “We have to make sure British audiences understand, for example, what Dixie is. We [Americans] all have information to bring to that. Here [in London] that’s not so.”113 The Donmar, however, has had a strong and successful history of bringing such innately American shows to London. As Eleanor Lang, the Donmar office administrator, notes, “very little of our work is new writing,” and the theatre has developed a reputation for creatively and effectively re-imagining older works. 114 The 1992 British premiere of Sondheim’s Assassins opened the theatre’s first season as an independent producing house, and its selection and potential problems eerily paralleled Parade’s. Similar to the characters who peopled the Leo Frank case, even in America, Sondheim says, “there was no resonance” to many of the assassins’ names, and so a British production was viewed as doubly brave.115 As with Parade, New York critics had found Sondheim’s musical “emotionally distant” and “too serious,” and one reviewer even hinted that it was unpatriotic and offensive.116 But if there was one thing that the Donmar had proven itself more than capable of, it was not simply making American shows accessible for British audiences, but reconsidering them in terms most able to reveal the works anew. Rather than simply recreating the original productions of the musicals they include in their seasons, the Donmar’s artistic staff consistently attempts to utilize directorial choices that greatly differ from the original stagings. This is evidenced by founding artistic director Sam Mendes’s declaration, “There was no question in my mind that a British audience would absolutely understand it [Assassins] – if I got it right.”117 Though the Donmar has had a long string of successfully

112 As indicated by Jason Robert Brown in personal interview on July 22, 2007 in New York.

113 David Benedict, “Ashford Welcomes Director Status: Famed Broadway Choreographer Leads Parade,” Variety 14 Sept. 2007, 30 Oct. 2007 .

114 Eleanor Lang, e-mail to author, 8 Oct. 2007.

115 Qtd. in Matt Wolf, Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom (New York: Proscenium Publishers, Inc., 2002) 20.

116 Matt Wolf, Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom (New York: Proscenium Publishers, Inc., 2002) 20.

117 Mendes qtd. in Wolf 22.

premiering and re-imagining American works in London, the theatre is not known especially for producing musicals (a musical is not always included in the season), though it has had enormous success with those by Sondheim. It was only fitting, with the comparisons that critics continually make between Sondheim and Brown, that the Donmar produce the British premiere of Parade. Like Assassins, Parade would be re-imagined by not only the director, but the creators as well. While Brown claims that the revised Parade is “about 80-85% the same” as that which was ultimately produced on Broadway, he downplays the significance of the alterations and additions that he and Uhry made.118 The critical response to the musical’s Broadway premiere surely had an effect on Parade’s creators (as demonstrated by Brown’s quote at the top of this chapter) and no doubt inspired many of the revisions made for the London premiere, ultimately adding to the effectiveness of the actor-audience dynamic. In his blog entitled “Revival,” Brown summarizes the changes, listing the six major alterations, the first of which was simply the result of allowing the Donmar to produce the musical. Due to its capacity for seating 250 spectators in egalitarian bench seating around its thrust stage and above on the balcony level, many refer to the Donmar as the West End’s only Off-Broadway-style theatre.119 Because of the drastically reduced space (in comparison to the original production which, produced at the Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont, sat nearly five times as many patrons), there was no possibility of recreating a musical that boasted a cast of thirty-five actors and an orchestra of twenty-one musicians. Instead of the epic “American opera” that Hal Prince had commissioned Brown and Uhry to write, Parade became a chamber musical that consisted solely of fifteen cast members and nine musicians.120 The use of a necessarily small cast of actors through the double casting of nearly all of them would prove effective in emphasizing both the creators’ newly revised and more fully developed characters, as well as the attempt to actively engage audiences intellectually as well as emotionally. Immediately establishing the intimate relationship between the musical and its spectators was the staging and the introduction of a new framing device in the opening number, “The Old Red Hills of Home.” Set against a plain two-story, merely functional wooden set,121 spectators were meant to supply the rolling hills of Georgia with their imaginations while the Young Soldier (Stuart Matthew Price) earnestly sang to his lover, Lila (Jane Wisener), of going off to war: I go to fight for these old hills behind me, These old red hills of home.

118 Jason Robert Brown, “Revival,” Jason Robert Brown 7 Oct. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

119 Richard Andrews, The London Theatre Guide (London: Metro Publications, 2003) 203.

120 Despite the relatively small cast and orchestra (for a musical), Parade boasts the title of the largest production in the Donmar’s history to date.

121 Christopher Oram’s wooden set appeared more Wild West than postbellum South, but its simplicity and sparseness effectively drew focus to the cast at all times. Few props were utilized. A chair, for example, signified the Franks’ bedroom, and the actors seamlessly brought all props on and off stage during transitions.

I go to fight for these old hills remind me Of a way of life that’s pure – Of a truth that must endure. . . .122 While the lyrics show that the Soldier clearly intends to fight for the South and all that it stood for in 1862 in Marietta, Georgia – an agrarian and genteel hierarchical society – physically placing Lila onstage (remember that she did not exist in the original production other than in lyric form) in the London production added another layer of meaning to “a way of life that’s pure.” Wisener, with her porcelain skin; big, round doll-like eyes; blonde hair pulled elegantly back; and slight, fragile frame, physically represented the chaste girl uncorrupted by war or urbanization. Costumed in a pale blue period hoop skirt and form-enhancing corset, she also signified the Southern male ideal of purity.123 Wisener’s presence then served to remind spectators of the innocence and purity that Southern men treasured for decades before the war. Price’s Soldier further emphasized this eternal longing when he sang, I’ve carved our names In the trunk of this tree. . . . And dream of the day When I’ll hold you again In a home safe from fear . . .124 By carving his and Lila’s names into the tree, the Young Soldier expresses his overwhelming desire to maintain such a seemingly honest, clean, and proud life. In this opening scene, the production presented a young Southern couple – innocent and likeable – that had not been fully visualized onstage in the Broadway premiere. Donmar audiences were confronted with a young man fighting not simply for a cause, but for an actual people. The Young Soldier was clearly fighting to maintain the Southern way of life and keep the South safe for his love, Lila. With Lila onstage, the production subtly highlighted the Southern humanity that was inherent to both book and score and which helped to portray the Southerners and their motivations to fight as sympathetic. “The Old Red Hills of Home,” however, does not evoke simply a sentimental view of the South and its people; it simultaneously and conversely reminds audiences of what the South was fighting for at the time. Most contemporary audiences would realize that Southern antebellum society – largely based on an acceptance of and dependence on slavery – was not nearly as pure as the Soldier claims. But, as spectators would see and hear throughout the course of the show, the themes of pride, purity, and truth that the Young Soldier extolled as Southern ideals worth fighting for would be complicated and subverted through the cyclical use of the music of this

122 Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry, Parade, Donmar Warehouse Final Draft, unpublished libretto, (28 Sept. 2007) 2. One can assume that all further quotations from Brown and Uhry in this chapter are taken from this version of the libretto.

123 See Nancy MacLean, “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism,” The Journal of American History 78 (1991): 918. As the allegation that Frank had actually raped thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan before murdering her (in addition to his being accused of lechery by multiple other factory girls) became the centerpiece of the case, the safety and, what was more, the purity of Southern women was at stake with the advent of a modern, factory-ridden Atlanta.

124 Brown and Uhry 2.

song which frames and infiltrates the show. As Donald Elgan Whittaker III points out in his analysis of Parade, “The cyclic nature of the work allows the audience continually to redefine its attitudes and responses to these situations and characters.”125 Before spectators became emotionally caught up in the soaring sentimentality of “The Old Red Hills of Home” due to their only seeing an ideal, loving couple onstage, they were presented with a clever reminder of the subversiveness of the number. After the Young Soldier departed and the Old Soldier appeared in his place to signify the passing of fifty years, the ensemble joined him onstage. But the staging was not romanticized to match the sweeping melody; rather, the ensemble formed a line of women behind a line of men, and as they walked downstage, they sang aggressively and directly to the audience. The men and women did not sing out over the audience, but selected specific spectators and sang directly to them: “Praise those who’d fight / . . . Who gave everything for Georgia / And the old red hills of home!”126 They fiercely maintained eye contact until the closing of the number, when they posed center stage in a group as though for a family photograph, while holding the final note of “home!” until it cut off eerily into a silence that was only punctuated a moment later by Leo and Lucille’s entrance. In the length of an approximately six-minute opening song, the concept of audience implication was quickly established. With little physical distance between the actors and the spectators (none of whom were more than four rows away from any of the three sides of the thrust) and no distracting scenery or lighting effects, the production immediately worked to implicate and engage the audience through direct and simple staging. The musical introduction to the overall concept of implication and audience engagement led directly into the introduction of the Jewish Franks in the following scene. After establishing the Southerners as more than an overly prideful people, the staging would do the same for the Franks. This offered the audience a balanced interpretation of the history, as well as allowed the concept to continue taking root as both groups directly prevailed upon the spectators for their sympathy. A short pause between “The Old Red Hills of Home” and the following scene offered no time for applause, and Bertie Carvel and Lara Pulver began the Franks’ first scene as they walked on, as though already in the midst of conversation. Carver and Pulver immediately delineated the contrasting couple. The skinny and meticulously dressed Carver nervously fidgeted with his glasses, giving Leo an intelligent, anxious air, while Pulver’s relaxed, open body language and loosely swept-up hair signified Lucille’s warm, easy-going manner. Pulver gave Lucille, who was obviously raised in the South, a warm, relaxed drawl when speaking of her wish to join in the Confederate Memorial Day festivities. Carver, with constant tense, insect- like head nodding and wrist flicking, gave the always exact Leo a no-nonsense Brooklyn accent while complaining of his new Southern home. The purpose of this bedroom scene (the location of which was denoted by a single chair for Lucille’s vanity mirror) in the musical is to introduce spectators to the main couple and their attitudes toward each other and the South in general, and in the London production, a multi-layered staging technique that would continue throughout the show began at this point as well. Neil Austin’s subtle, warm lighting picked up Leo and Lucille as they discussed the parade downstage, but all the while the ensemble remained posed together center, dimly lit and frozen. Similar to Hal Prince’s direction of the scene, Ashford presented

125 Donald Elgan Whittaker III, Subversive Aspects of American Musical Theatre, diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College, 2002 (Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2002) 132.

126 Brown and Uhry 3.

spectators with the literal divide between the Jewish Franks and their Southern neighbors. Two outsiders stood alone, secluded in their home, while the vast Southern community surrounded, yet never included them. As the scene concluded on Leo’s last line, and Lucille retreated offstage, the ensemble broke into a chorus of “The Dream of Atlanta,” and again became an active community, enthusiastically celebrating Confederate Memorial Day, waving flags and throwing confetti. As Leo made his way through the crowd on his way to the factory, wondering all the while, “How Can I Call This Home?” Carver sang Leo’s complaints directly to the spectators: These people make me tense. I live in fear they’ll start a conversation. . . . It’s like a foreign land. I didn’t understand that being Southern’s not just being in the South.127 While the rowdy crowd celebrated behind him, Carver’s Leo stood downstage, looking into the audience as though in private conversation with the spectators, and sang to them conspiratorially. He poked fun at the Southerners while gesturing to them, and vented his frustrations as though to friends who were sure to share his sympathies. It was at this point that spectators were clearly presented with how the Donmar production would operate. Both sides – the Franks and the Southerners – would persistently and aggressively vie for their sympathy and support, and though the ensemble would continually declare “We Stand together / in the great state of Georgia!” the production’s staging and additional framing device would always show the audience otherwise.128 At this point the two groups maintained a respectful distance, but they would become more actively hostile towards one another, and while the cyclic nature of the show, as Whittaker points out, subtly allows the audience to consistently redefine itself towards the characters and situations, this function was made more readily apparent to audiences by staging that consistently and visually highlighted the societal divide. The production further emphasized the structural function of the score and script by offering the physical representation of Lila as an additional supportive framing device that made more apparent the growing divide between the Franks and the Southerners, while also drawing focus to the reason the divide came about in the first place. Before Lila made her second appearance in the production, the casting prepared the audience for her special significance. As already discussed, the Donmar’s limited stage space necessitated a cast half the size of the Broadway production, and to accomplish this drastic change, Ashford double -, and in some cases, triple-cast actors in various roles with the exception of Carvel and Pulver whose Leo and Lucille would always be recognized as other, or different in some way due to those actors’ single casting.129 Because of these casting choices, the next time the audience encountered Stuart Matthew Price and Jane Wisener – just two scenes later after being introduced to the Franks – was not in fact as the Young Soldier and Lila, but as Frankie Epps and Mary Phagan. While possibly momentarily distracting, the choice to have Price and Wisener portray both couples highlighted the Southern drive for the idealized agrarian, genteel society. This became apparent when, after the opening musical number (during which the musical moves from

127 Brown and Uhry 7-8.

128 Brown and Uhry 8.

129 Brown, “Revival.”

the Civil War to fifty years later), Frankie playfully courted Mary as she made her way to the pencil factory and, tragically, to her death. When Price’s Frankie asked Wisener’s Mary to go to “The Picture Show,” a white flower-dressed Wisener, with blonde curls and ribboned pigtails, responded with wide-eyed, doll-like innocence, “Go on, go on, go on, go on, / You know my mama’d never let me till I turn sixteen.”130 Following this reminder of the Southern ideal of gentility and purity, spectators were informed of changes that had occurred during the time that had elapsed. When Frankie insisted that Mary accompany him, she boldly and flirtatiously responded, “Why not ask Iola Stover? / Her mama lets her do whatever she wants.”131 As was soon revealed, both Mary and Iola were workers at the factory in the rising metropolis of Atlanta, and as Nancy MacLean points out in her article “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered,” these young girls had to work in the city to help support their rural families whose farming income had been reduced due to urbanization. As such, Mary “personified the bitter dilemma of the region’s emerging industrial proletariat, forced to rely on children’s wages to make ends meet.”132 MacLean goes on to point out that such employment exposed these young girls to a working- class sexual culture, causing female factory workers to be associated with prostitutes in the minds of Southern men. This modernized, and in Southerners’ minds, demoralized South was not that which the Young Soldier had set out to fight for all those years ago. Yet the scene between Mary and Frankie is bookended with the anthem, “The Dream of Atlanta”: Ever more lives the dream of Atlanta Ever more her eternal pride! Strong and sure is the dream of Atlanta When her brothers are unified!133 This single verse song essentially works as a coda to “The Old Red Hills of Home,” smoothly transitioning between scenes and reiterating the dream of the ideal Atlanta that was first introduced by the Young Soldier and Lila. That Wisener’s Southern female maintained the appearance of innocence in her physical representation made the contrast between her regal and quiet demeanor as Lila in the first number and her coy sexuality as Mary in the second all the more striking. While “The Dream of Atlanta” aurally reminds listeners that the Southern dream had not altered over time, the use of double casting visually emphasized that it should have. While all may have appeared ideal on the surface due to the reassurance of Wisener’s fixed innocent physicality, Southern society had clearly and drastically changed, which Wisener’s delineated characterizations of Lila and Mary demonstrated. Rather than staging an actual Memorial Day parade as Hal Prince did in the Broadway production – a potentially difficult task in the Donmar’s small space – and utilizing the parade as a subversive framing device for the musical, Ashford employed the silent Lila as the new through-line. Not present in the Broadway production was Lila’s four-time appearance including her materialization in the opening number. Each appearance in the London production occurred during a moment of blind hatred and declaration of retribution for Mary’s murder, and in each

130 Brown and Uhry 9.

131 Brown and Uhry 10.

132 Nancy MacLean, “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism,” The Journal of American History 78 (1991): 923.

133 Brown and Uhry 9, 11.

instance, all four youths – the Young Soldier, Lila, Mary and Frankie – were represented physically, lyrically, and/or musically. Creating an unsettling effect that worked to remind the audience of the South’s pride and stubborn refusal to let go of the past, the first such appearance took place during Mary’s funeral when the music tempo quickened and the tone darkened as Frankie promised vengeance against Mary’s killer: . . . I swear right now to God: He ain’t never gonna git away with what he done to Mary! Let him quiver in his boots! Let him run until he bleeds! I won’t rest until I know He’s burning in his grave forevermore!134 When Wisener manifested during Mary’s funeral, she physically portrayed Lila (denoted by costume) while simultaneously symbolizing little Mary (additionally emphasized by the small, white coffin onstage), and Price embodied Frankie, while symbolically portraying the Young Soldier. Now that spectators had seen Wisener depict both Lila (the symbol of Southern purity) and Mary (the new Southern working woman), she would always embody both of these characters in her physical presence, no matter which costume she donned. Of course, these depictions of the Southern woman clashed; to Southerners, Mary and her contemporaries did not quite fulfill the ideal. Wisener’s presence as Lila – and concurrently as Mary – consistently reminded the audience of this strange dichotomy, while also providing more depth and complexity to each of the characters she portrayed. Wisener’s Lila/Mary depicted the clash of ideals and actions within the South at the time. While the world had changed and would continue to do so – Atlanta modernized, women began working outside of the home – Southerners would go on as though it was still 1862. The people still needed to fight for something, even if it was an ideal that could never exist. Though the musical’s opening number lyrically denotes the ideal of fighting for truth and honor, Whittaker observes, “there is a subversion of patriotic bias, as American patriotic parade music becomes literally discordant; this subversion is made more particular as the music becomes cacophonous in relation to other, similar, music. In Parade, it is the Memorial Day parade music itself that is dissonant with the music of ‘The Old Red Hills of Home.’”135 The funeral foreshadows how noble intentions such as punishing a little girl’s murderer can be distorted and accomplished by dishonorable means, but the song itself does not contain the same musical dissonance that Whittaker points out in the opening number; instead, Wisener’s Lila/Mary depicted this social dissonance. The staging further emphasized this during the funeral when, after singing the above lines, Price gently placed a small hand-held Confederate flag within Mary’s coffin.136 The

134 Brown and Uhry 25.

135 Whittaker 133.

136 Ashford made great use of these flags throughout the production. Audiences saw them during the parade celebrations and Mary carried one during “The Picture Show,” as well as during the scene with Frank in his office. Because they were used with such ease and carelessness by the Southerners, the transition from a “harmless” flag as the main prop to the KKK masks (which were donned and then utilized with the same ease) at the end of “Where Will You Stand When the Flood Comes?” was chillingly striking.

production consistently reminded the audience that Frankie and the other Southerners were wrongly channeling their anger and bitterness for the changes in their lives towards one man who, to them, represented all the wrong and evil within modern society. In each of her appearances, Lila seemed to also represent some of the Donmar spectators, who sat (mostly) quietly and passively viewing the show. With a pale, ghostly light softly illuminating her, the elegantly dressed Wisener stood either on the shallow balcony level of the wooden set overlooking the action, or on the bottom platform standing against the wall looking out, and she consistently and directly faced the audience. She was always motionless and silent, and never did her doll-like face betray any kind of feeling. She appeared neither angered nor saddened by the increasingly chaotic and vengeful world unfurling before or below her – and she never interceded. Because of such appearances, she could be interpreted as representing those Southerners – and even some Northerners, as the entire country became fixated by the case – who stood by doing nothing, all the while knowing Frank was wrongfully treated from the beginning of the investigation.137 Lila watched the action while never interfering, similar to how spectators are usually asked to act while watching a play. She then could also be viewed as a direct representation of spectators in the audience who could not (or would not) accept the actors’ implications of them, thereby reflecting their general silence. Because spectators were able to see her viewing the performance in much the same manner as they were, the possibility existed that they were duly aware of her highlighting the subversiveness in the show (through her operation as a supportive framing device) and cognizant of themselves and their roles within the performance. Lila was then a kind of silent audience-narrator who physically represented those who could not or would not engage with the show – whether emotionally or intellectually or both – thereby reflecting the actions, or lack thereof, that greatly led to Frank’s tragic end. Lila was economically employed for multiple purposes, including the role of narrator which she took over from reporter Britt Craig who narrated the Broadway production. While Uhry and Brown’s reworking of the text cut Craig’s stage time, the production did not fail to fully utilize the droll and manipulative reporter. In the original production, Craig broke the story and proceeded to cover the entire trial, informing audiences of the case’s developments and of the reactions to the case all over the country. Brown notes that Craig acted as an audience stand- in, much as Lila did in the Donmar production.138 The London production, however, added

137 While Frank’s innocence – and Jim Conley’s guilt – is largely unquestioned today, the case is shrouded in ambiguities that do not allow for absolute certainty. However, the improper manner in which the case was undertaken by both the police (threatening witnesses; forcing Frank to identify the body – after Mary’s mother had already done so, presumably so as to witness his “guilty” reaction; allowing reporter Britt Craig to handle evidence at the crime scene; and so on) and prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (leading witnesses, attacking the Franks’ marriage, etc.) clearing influenced jurors. Also influencing them were the unfair trial conditions that included constant jeers at Jewish witnesses from those present in the courtroom and loud cheering for Dorsey from the mob gathered outside. These cheers at times drowned out testimony, which clearly influenced jurors, yet the motion for a mistrial was denied by Judge Roan: “. . . I do not know whether Leo Frank is innocent or guilty. But I was not the one to be convinced. The jury was convinced and I must approve the verdict and overrule the motion.” Roan, qtd. in Harry Golden, A Little Girl Is Dead (New York: Avon Books, 1965) 233.

138 Brown, “Revival.” Regarding Britt Craig: “As we went on writing, Britt became less and less important to the storytelling, but we had given him such a big fabulous introduction [“Big News!”] that we felt obliged to keep him in the forefront of the narrative. This became particularly problematic in Act Two, where there was really nothing for him to do . . . . We shouldn’t have given Britt Craig such a big

another layer to Craig’s character by having Gary Milner, who played Craig, also portray Governor Slaton, one of a few truly noble Southerners depicted in the piece.139 Paralleling most of the other double casting throughout the show, Milner portrayed both a “bad” character (Craig), as well as a “good” one (Slaton) and while both characters are more complex than these basic distinctions, this choice of double casting pointed to how easily the spectators themselves could shift from one to the other.140 Despite this, diminishing Craig’s narrator role could have resulted in audiences losing their direct connection with the show. The employment of Lila, however, worked to make spectators both aware of their outsider status as audience members (a status that could easily align their sympathies with Leo), while it also set up the production to exploit and manipulate that status in later scenes. Wisener’s Lila initially may have made spectators aware of their own presence within the performance, but the production had yet to entirely define the spectators’ roles. Wisener’s second Lila reappearance occurred at the conclusion of the trial. Even more crucial than this, however, was that the nine-part trial sequence more sharply defined the concept of transforming the role of audience members from simple spectators to actual participants within Parade through the actors’ vying for the spectators’ support as though they were actual jury members. That Brown’s most significant alterations to the score occur at the beginning of this sequence only aided in the audience’s implication. Because of the more thorough musical development of the religious zealot Tom Watson, Watson and his followers have become the central driving force against Frank. Instead of Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “People of Atlanta,” Watson now opened the trial with his “Hammer of Justice,” the reprises of which also replaced all those of “People of Atlanta” within the sequence. 141 The opening portion of the new number was staged as though it was a revival tent meeting, with Norman Bowman’s sinister and intense Watson standing center stage brandishing cross and Bible while the ensemble rushed on with benches, quickly surrounding him and hanging on his every word. In the call-and-response song, Watson circled his followers, goading them – and the spectators, as he often sang intensely and

introduction because he just wasn’t important enough. So when Alfred [Uhry] and I sat down this spring [2007] to reassess the show, we decided to just cut “Big News!” and let Britt Craig assume his natural tertiary position in the narrative.” Craig’s reprise, “Real Big News,” still remains in the show.

139 For a full and convincing argument that Parade is not anti-Southern, see Whittaker 130-1.

140 Other significant double casting included Helen Anker as Mrs. Phagan and Sally Slaton; Mark Bonnar as Hugh Dorsey and a (nervous and unsure) lyncher; Steven Page as the Old Soldier, Judge Roan, and a (kindly) guard; and Shaun Escoffery as Jim Conley, Newt Lee, and (the servant) Riley. While not as significant as the Lila/Mary double casting (and framing device), all of these doubled roles operated in the same manner as the Britt Craig/Gov. Slaton casting. Each pair (or grouping) of characters portrayed by a single actor depicted how no single character within Parade is entirely “bad” or “good” – and how easily a person can fluctuate between these two broad characterizations.

141 Brown, “Revival”: “As far as Parade was concerned, he [Fiddlin’ John] was just one more goddamn person for the audience to keep track of, and so we decided that time could be better spent on a character who actually mattered to the plot: Tom Watson.” Many consider Carson to be the first country singer and he did in fact perform his most popular song, “The Ballad of Little Mary Phagan” (sample lyric: “She fell upon her knees, to Leo Frank she pled / Because she was virtuous, he hit her across the head”) for the mob outside of the courthouse.

directly to the audience – with question after question. To each “Who’s gonna smite the smilin’ devils?” and “Who will restore this angel’s honor?” the crowd echoed “Who!” and each of these echoes became more frenzied than the last.142 This new number not only increased the stakes for the trial by amplifying the disturbing passion of the crowd from the beginning of the sequence (which culminated in the closing chaos of the “Summation and Cakewalk”), but its reprises throughout smoothly transitioned between witnesses and testimony without ever allowing for a break. This constant flow from one musical number into the next (characteristic of all musical numbers within the production) never allowed the audience a moment’s pause to reflect or ponder the case.143 Instead, the spectators, like the crowd in the courthouse, were seemingly swept away by the sensational evidence and character witnesses presented before them. Here, directly following the scene with Lila, the production dramatically switched tactics as though to demonstrate that it is just as easy to be swept up in mob mentality as it is to sit by and do nothing. Spectators were then implicated during the trial due to the staging that positioned them not simply as members of the crowd within the courthouse but, crucially, as jurors as well. When Prosecutor Dorsey began his opening statement, “Your Honor, gentlemen of the jury, and good people of Georgia,” he gazed directly into the audience, selecting spectators with whom he maintained eye contact throughout.144 But it was not simply that he spoke to spectators as jurors (a role which was emphasized by the wooden railing that framed the balcony as though it was a jury box), but as people of Georgia. He claimed the Donmar’s spectators as his people, not those of the Northerner Frank, thereby assuming his and their mutual sympathies: People of Atlanta fought for freedom to their graves, And now their city is a fact’ry and their children are its slaves. People of Atlanta swing their city gates wide, And look at what you’ve wrought!145 In one short verse, Dorsey reminded the audience of the “evil” results of welcoming outsiders into their proud, Southern society, and when Mark Bonnar’s Dorsey sang “Look at what you’ve wrought!” he admonished spectators while gesturing fiercely to Frank. By proving the spectators’ “guilt” for allowing such outsiders to modernize “their” cities and ruin “their” women, Bonnar’s Dorsey attempted to sway them against Frank. While clearly Brown and Uhry are certain of Frank’s innocence (and point to Conley as the real killer), directorial choices employed attempted to shake the audience’s convictions by intellectually engaging them throughout the trial. One of the ways in which the production accomplished this was by presenting Leo Frank as alternately (and often simultaneously) sympathetic and unlikable, thereby asking spectators to consider the case and the issues it raises for themselves, rather than merely siding with a clearly wronged victim. Carvel, for example, embodied exactly what so many had complained about the real Leo Frank – his nervousness, aloofness, and tendency to

142 Brown and Uhry 40.

143 The Broadway production attempted the same relentless flow, but it never quite succeeded. Strange pauses were present throughout, often causing the audience to awkwardly applaud after musical numbers.

144 Brown and Uhry 41A.

145 Brown and Uhry 42.

cold exactness.146 During Mrs. Phagan’s testimony, Carvel’s Frank sat stoically, legs crossed and arms folded neatly in his lap. As she spoke, he never once looked in her direction, as though he could not be bothered by her womanish emotions. During one performance, while Helen Anker as the girl’s heartbroken mother broke down sobbing, Carvel calmly removed his glasses and proceeded to clean them nonchalantly – to the horror of any who noticed.147 Carvel’s Frank, like Bonnar’s Dorsey, continually complicated the audience’s convictions and expectations, and both characters learned through the course of the show that they must actively work to gain audience support and sympathy. The staging of the trial in particular demonstrated the effectiveness of this concept, as spectators were both engaged emotionally and intellectually throughout. Mrs. Phagan’s testimony offered another opportunity for Dorsey to implicate spectators as the audience-jury. As she alternately wept and sang such lines as “My child will forgive me / for not doin’ more / to protect her from men who are cruel,” Dorsey slowly prowled the stage, thrusting Mary’s bloodied lavender pongee dress at the audience, while making direct eye contact with specific spectators – showing them exactly what they had “wrought” by allowing such (perverse) men as Frank to infiltrate the city.148 Later, a smooth-crooning Jim Conley (Shaun Escoffery), the factory’s cocksure black janitor, eerily charmed the audience through his soulful song and dance number in which he claimed Frank coerced him into watching his office door while Frank seduced the young factory girls inside. All the while, Dorsey continually looked to spectators, emphatically echoing Conley’s accusation, “That’s What He Said,” as though insisting to them that such testimony could never be contested. The courthouse crowd, incensed by Conley’s accusations against Frank, vocally supported Dorsey and Conley, and physically overran the courtroom, shouting/singing “Hang ‘im! / Hang the Jew!” over and over again.149 Conley, ever the sly entertainer, concluded his testimonial song standing on the witness

146 Another moment that effectively conveyed how Ashford and Carvel complicated Leo’s character occurred during the scene between Frank and Mary at the factory. Here, Carvel walked towards Mary in slow motion, gradually stretching out his arm – with her pay in hand – towards her. He then reached her and stood inappropriately close. When she inquired, “Mr. Frank?” Carvel slowly and seductively removed his glasses from his face, and responded suggestively, “What is it?” A blackout then occurred and the ensemble immediately burst into a rousing chorus of “The Dream of Atlanta,” while celebrating Confederate Memorial Day. Later, at the end of the show, the staging of the flashback of the same scene vindicated Frank. No blackout occurred, and Mary, responding, “Happy Memorial Day,” handed him the small Confederate flag she had been holding since meeting with Frankie on her way to the factory. Carvel’s Frank took the proffered flag, and as she left, he leaned over the set’s balcony railing, a small smile crossing his face.

147 This occurred on Thursday, September 27, 2007. Though I saw two performances following this, Carvel did not repeat this action. Most spectators (many of whom were crying themselves) more than likely missed this action by Carvel, as focus was on the sobbing woman center stage. Because both actions occurred simultaneously, this moment demonstrates the production’s adeptness at potentially achieving both kinds of engagement: emotional (spectators empathize with the grieving mother) and intellectual (they contemplate Leo’s character and innocence).

148 Brown and Uhry 48.

149 Brown and Uhry 52.

chair, arms outspread, showily holding his last note until Dorsey cut him off. The show of Conley’s number was yet another of Dorsey’s attempts at winning spectators over, and it largely worked: audience members could be seen tapping their feet and nodding their heads to the beat, and at one performance one spectator became so entranced by Conley’s charm (effectively depicted by Escoffery) that he began to enthusiastically clap at the conclusion of the number – despite Bonnar’s impeccably timed “Jim” that cut off the singing, usually discouraging such applause.150 Aptly following Conley’s number, as though to directly counteract the janitor’s defamatory statements, Frank took the stand. It was in this moment that the staging indicated Frank’s realization that he must actively seek the sympathy and support of the Southerners he had so decisively disregarded until that point. In other words, Frank was being given equal chance to win over the jury-audience, as Dorsey had already attempted to do. This ostensibly would prompt the spectators to actively engage as the jurors who must decide with which man to side. To gain their support, Carvel’s Frank gently sat down and began to quietly sing. Initially almost as though to himself, too nervous to make eye contact, he sang directly to his wife Lucille (“These people try to scare you / with things I’ve never said”151) and then, finally, he faced the audience and sang: I swear I don’t know why… You see me as I am – You can’t believe I’d lie – You can’t believe I’d do these deeds – . . . I stand before you now… Incredibly afraid. I pray you understand.152 With forced courage, Carvel’s Frank began scanning the audience, both directly in front of him, and above in the balcony, searching frantically for a sympathetic face. During each of the three performances that I attended, the silence in the room was palpable, and all, including the courthouse ensemble, were motionless, rapt with attention.153 While Dorsey and Conley managed to hypnotize the audience-jury just moments prior with their flashy showmanship, Frank’s simple plea, directed to the audience specifically, and significantly, his first genuine sign of emotion, again placed the spectators in the powerful position of deciding his innocence or guilt. Following Frank’s statement, and a slight, but weighty pause, Dorsey began his closing statement, while the ensemble – strategically placed throughout the theatre – onstage, amidst the audience in the balcony and below, and even behind the spectators in the partition that separates

150 Parade, Donmar, 27 Sept. 2007. The real Jim Conley was indeed the cunning showman that Parade depicts him to be.

151 Brown and Uhry 54.

152 Brown and Uhry 54.

153 Golden 173: “The statement moved them [those in the courthouse]. There was no sound when Frank finished and walked back to his table to welcome the embraces of his wife, Lucille, who had begun to sob. . . . For the second time during the trial, Frank let his emotions take over. He, too, looked as if he would weep.”

the lobby from the house – softly sang a verse of “The Old Red Hills of Home” in the background – and yet their voices surrounded and enveloped the audience through their proximity: DORSEY This angel met her end on the concrete ENSEMBLE floor of the sweatshop where she toiled God bless this day in the old hills of away her childhood fastening erasers Georgia, to pencil caps for ten pennies an hour. The old red hills of home. She died a noble death without a splotch All sinners pay in the old hills of or blemish upon her. Your Honor, Georgia, I’ve done my duty. Let us finish what’s begun I have no apologies to make. There will And let Jesus’ will be done! be but one verdict: GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!154 The inherent sentimentality of “The Old Red Hills of Home” is clearly utilized subversively here, as it is plainly associated with convicting an innocent man. The ensemble goes so far as to associate such an action with the will of God155 which, as Adam Roberts points out in his analysis of Parade’s score, is emphasized by the musical punctuation of the jurors’ individual declarations of “Guilty!”: “Each time the chimes are used throughout the score for Parade they are intended to evoke a sense of guilt or sorrow; of ‘wrongness’ in some way.”156 These declarations of guilt seemed to come from all directions within the dimly lit Donmar, and surrounded by those with the power to decide Frank’s fate, though unable to see them, spectators were once again implicated in that decision. Lila’s presence in the background of the scene (and in front of a warmly lit backdrop of Confederate flags and figures) further implicated spectators, as she reflected their stance through her own silent viewing. She also, however, reminded them that the noble-minded Young Soldier’s initial use of “The Old Red Hills of Home” musical motif was now being employed for corrupt and intolerant purposes. Neither the foreboding chimes, nor Lila’s quiet presence, however, appeared overpowering or didactic. The audience was aware of them because of their consistent presence throughout the show, but they never seemed to draw focus. Rather, they subtly grounded spectators in the reality of the story – a reality that required reminding, as they watched the disturbing celebratory cakewalk while the jurors gave their verdicts.157 The choice

154 Brown and Uhry 54.

155 Samuels 167-8: “As he [Dorsey] said these words twelve o’clock struck and the church bells of the city began chiming in tones that seemed like an echo of his peroration ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’ The superstitious – and there were many present – recalled that it was precisely at that moment, twelve noon, that Mary Phagan had walked into the factory to her death; to them it was a sign that God wished the child avenged.” See also Golden 192.

156 Adam Roberts, An Analysis of Musical Narrative and Signification in Jason Robert Brown’s Score for Parade, thesis, The Florida State University, 2005 (Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI, 2006) 20-1. Roberts observes that these chimes are also present in the show’s opening number and during Mary’s funeral, both of which foreshadow Frank’s tragic fate.

157 Golden 170: “That afternoon, streetcar conductors and motormen abandoned their trolley cars on the downtown streets to join the happy throngs. In the stores and at social functions women clapped their

of music and corresponding choreography possessed especial significance for not only did the turn-of-the-twentieth-century witness the “cakewalk craze,” this particular dance was created and popularized by African Americans in the South. Ironically then, white Southerners celebrated the terrible fate of a Jewish man, appropriating another marginalized people’s culture. While the jubilant dance music drowned out the jurors’ somber declarations of guilt, the ensemble eagerly overran the courtroom, stomping and high-kicking enthusiastically as they strutted across the stage. At the height of this chaos, and as both the chimes and “The Old Red Hills of Home” motif recurred within the music of the triumphant cakewalk, the horrified Leo and Lucille, each under a bright white, alienating light, were placed upon chairs and lifted above the townspeople’s heads as the crowd gleefully shouted and danced around the raised couple in a cruel mockery of the Jewish wedding tradition. When the contrasting tonalities came to a definite conclusion – yet not a resolution – only Leo and Lucille were left onstage, shocked and alone, as Lila looked down on them seemingly impassively. And then, abruptly, a black-out occurred. The staging at this point in the act one finale again placed Leo and Lucille as apart from all other Southerners – physically, as well as intellectually. Lila’s presence therefore reminded spectators of the reality that the Southerners had clearly lost sight of as they were swept away with the frenzy of retribution and the desperate need for the glory of the old days. At this point in the revised musical, the show reasserts the Southerners’ desperation to maintain “The Glory.” This additional musical number is noteworthy because it 1) more fully develops the character of Dorsey who, without the song, would have little to do in the second act despite his enormous significance in the first half of the show and 2) unlike Tom Watson’s new song which added to the momentum of the musical and the engagement of the audience, this number slowed the pace and excluded spectators. During the song, Dorsey joined Judge Roan as he fished over the balcony level of the set with his pants rolled up and legs dangling in the “water,” peacefully casting a fishing line. Here spectators learned that Roan was grooming Dorsey to become the new governor, and more importantly, this scene reiterates the main reason for the case against Frank: Change isn’t bad, But change should go slow. One change above Can shift ten things below. Know when to stop Or you find yourself choppin’ Down old trees that still grow, The old ways we all know. The old rules, the old days, The glory.158 The nostalgia of this piece brought back the sentiment of “The Old Red Hills of Home,” reminding audiences of the ambition and stubborn pride that led to Frank’s arrest. Cutting the

hands and hugged one another at hearing the splendid news. At the ball game there were more demonstrations of joy when the news of the verdict was posted on the scoreboard. . . . And in front of the National Pencil Company’s factory where Mary Phagan had died, hundreds of men and women danced the cakewalk to express their delight that the little girl had been avenged.”

158 Brown and Uhry 70.

Judge’s song (“Letter to the Governor”), which previously occupied this place in the musical and came seemingly out of nowhere, was for the best since, as Brown claims, the new song “explain[s] the undercurrent of fury that blows up during ‘Where Will You Stand When the Flood Comes?’”159 “The Glory” indeed accomplished this in the production, but unfortunately it also slowed the build of that fury. Until that point, the Southerners’ vengeful anger had been swiftly building as demonstrated by the black servants Riley and Angela’s bitter observation that “They comin’, they comin’ now, yessirree! / ’cause a white man’s gonna get hung, you see. / There’s a black man swingin’ in ev’ry tree / but they don’t never pay attention!” and Lucille’s fierce determination to help her husband (“Do It Alone”), both of which set the determined tone and feverish pace earlier in the act. Now the grim aggressiveness that was steadily building to what could only culminate in an act of violence came to an abrupt stop with the lazy tempo of “The Glory.” While its pace perfectly matched its lyrical sentiment (“change should go slow”), “The Glory” awkwardly and unnecessarily took spectators out of the action that they – as the audience-jury – had come to care about. The song reverted Parade back into a musical that spectators merely watched, rather than implicating and engaging them in some way. While this is not the only number that does this within the musical, it is the only one that is expendable through its superfluous (and fictionalized) exposition, despite its fuller development of Dorsey’s motivation to convict Frank. After the slight setback produced by “The Glory,” the production yet again began to implicate the audience, quickly returning to its audience-as-participant approach through the theme of religious zealotry and intolerance. After Lucille convinced Governor Slaton to reopen the case, it was the Populist leader and Christian zealot Tom Watson whose aggressiveness brought the feverish pace back to the production, demonstrating the unbelievable speed through which the inevitable tragic ending came about. While Slaton, on the balcony level of the wooden set, directly addressed the audience, announcing his decision to commute Frank’s sentence from death to life in prison, Tom Watson incited the crowd’s fury below, ferociously inquiring “Where Will You Stand When the Flood Comes?” Seemingly, spectators were meant to connect with Slaton as he verbally reached out to them from the balcony, yet Watson and his followers’ incredible passion occurring below the governor distracted the audience, eventually drowning out Slaton’s concluding remark, “I could not afford not to commute him. And I believe people will realize that…this was my only course.”160 Similar to the unbelievable rapidity with which the mob took up its stance against Frank, the aggression of Watson and his blind following culminated in a terrifying display of religious intolerance. Watson’s fanatic disciples surrounded him, and with clasping hands that they thrust against and away from their chests, they stomped and kneeled violently, rocking back and forth in aggressive, religious ecstasy. This extreme display of religious fanaticism overpowered Slaton’s plea for tolerance, thus sweeping the audience into Watson’s religious tirade. In this moment, Watson effectively worked to control the audience’s attention and engagement, including them as participants in his intolerant following. During the fast-paced choreography of violent genuflection, and after Dorsey joined Watson’s stance against Frank and all “others,” with each man declaring, “Someone’s gonna

159 Brown, “Revival.”

160 Brown and Uhry 86.

pay!” Lila again appeared on the top platform before the Confederate backdrop.161 Her appearance once again worked to remind spectators that the South was still fighting long after the Civil War had ended and how the Southerners’ methods of fighting (religious persecution and intolerance) directly contradicted that which they were fighting for (a genteel, ordered society). I would also like to argue that her presence offered an additional and timely warning of what would befall any who allowed themselves to become caught up in the hunger for retribution. She worked to remind audience members of their passivity as spectators, and how easy it was for them to simply stand by and do nothing while injustice occurred – or, conversely, become swept up by the fury of retribution (as they seemingly did during Watson’s song). She then emphasized this even more clearly during the finale. After Frank was physically hanged and his body removed from the stage by his killers, Wisener’s Lila again materialized, and appeared to resignedly open her parasol while walking quietly and stoically across the stage and out of the auditorium through the audience – just as the spectators would soon do after obligatorily applauding, an action which could almost be understood as applause for that final, violent act of Parade. The last to exit the stage at the end of the performance, Lila bookended and infiltrated the show through her ghostly materializations, tracing the historic path that led to Frank’s fate, while implicating the spectators as emotional and intellectual participants. One of the best things that could have ever happened to Parade was the Donmar Warehouse and Rob Ashford’s directorial choices. The necessary streamlining of cast and orchestra for the small space created a sharper, tighter production that inevitably pushed Parade in a new direction. The Donmar’s thrust stage and intimate seating allowed a closer actor- audience relationship that Ashford’s staging keenly exploited throughout the production, particularly during Frank’s trial. With the concept of audience implication, halved cast and orchestra, functional two-story set, and a leading man who had never before performed professionally in a musical, this Parade could not have been more different than its Broadway inception. The production, lacking the metaphorical visual of the Confederate Memorial Day parade that (along with the foreboding, enormous oak tree) overpowered the Broadway production, was tighter, closer, and more aggressive. It was the implication of the audience, persistently present in each moment – from the opening number, to the trial, and finally to that inevitable, tragic ending – that set the Donmar’s Parade significantly apart from the Broadway production. This unflagging, unashamed insinuation that audience members were both judge and jury informed the changes that were made to characters, score, dialogue, and casting, and shaped Parade into a piece that encouraged spectators’ active emotional and intellectual engagement for meaning and explanation, rather than simply playing to them as teachable viewers. The London production accomplished this mainly through simplicity of design and a directness in staging that was never didactic or overwhelming and which visually supported in a subtle way that which was only aurally present before (in Brown’s score). All elements of the production demonstrated an understanding of the musical score’s role in subtly relaying themes and tensions within the complex story. The Donmar’s production clarified and focused Parade’s main issues without ever losing its grasp on its main objective – the audience. From the balcony of the Vivian Beaumont in New York City, Parade was far too distant and impersonal, but from the Donmar in London, spectators realized how close it really was. As soon became apparent, this approach of active emotional and intellectual engagement proved a success not only with audiences, but with the London critics as well.

161 Brown and Uhry 87.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE LONDON PRODUCTION

Since a lot of British critics are brought up on the classical dramatic theatre, they find it difficult to take serious musicals seriously. They can react to fluffy musicals like Crazy for You and 42nd Street, and embrace them because they are more comfortable with the tradition of the Broadway musical that they were brought up on. . . . Over here [in England] the majority of critics reviewed the idea of taking a classic book like Les Miserables and making it into a musical. The reaction was: how dare he musicalize it, and how dare it be done at the RSC? - Sir Cameron Mackintosh162

Introduction: The British Tradition

British critics are generally viewed as harsher and blunter than their American counterparts, seemingly resentful of the idea of consumer-oriented criticism. The majority are highly educated, primarily holding degrees in English from distinguished universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. Traditionally holding Shakespeare and other great dramatic writers in high regard, British criticism is dominated by a preference for the written word (over the theatricality of a work as demonstrated by its production elements) and these critics are generally well respected by British theatre practitioners. London’s West End and Off-West End is not particularly known for producing new musicals, and besides the ubiquitous works by Andrew Lloyd-Webber (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita) and Elton John (The Lion King, Aida), it does not often encounter many homegrown musicals. London’s contribution to musical theatre both past and present consists almost entirely of megamusicals, musical comedies, and the trendy movie-turned-musical works. The New Voices’ works, with few exceptions, have not graced London stages, and the few that have made it across the pond did not reside in the West End.163 Few London critics mention Parade’s Broadway production at all and so the majority treated Parade as an entirely new work, not recognizing the changes that have been made to the score and book.164 With such limited exposure to Parade and the other New Voices’ musicals, British critics could have received Parade as something rather unusual, objecting to its deviations from the musical tradition that has gone largely unchallenged in London. Almost all, however, embraced

162Qtd. in Kalina Stefanova-Peteva, ed., Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages? (Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000) 60-1. One can assume that all further quotes of Stefanova-Peteva in this chapter are taken from this source.

163 Fringe productions of Floyd Collins (1999), Hello Again (2001), and Songs for a New World (2001) were mounted at the now defunct Bridewell Theater. The two Off-West End productions were The Last Five Years (2006) at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Caroline, or Change (2006) at the National Theatre.

164 Variety’s foreign correspondent David Benedict outlines the changes that were made, but does not analyze them or discuss their effectiveness in any capacity. Benedict Nightingale is the only other critic who mentions some alterations, which I will discuss later in this chapter.

the musical when it opened on September 14, 2007, and whether or not they did so because it appeared simply as a welcome novelty, most seemed to admire its ambition and serious subject matter. To understand their generally laudatory response, I have gathered eighteen reviews from varied sources including newspapers, magazines, and websites, breaking down how London critics analyzed and discussed the essential elements of the musical (book, music, and choreography), while also pinpointing other matters of interest such as topicality, romance, tone, and design that appeared frequently throughout the reviews and were therefore also significant in the London production’s success. These critical comparisons show that though Parade’s topic initially surprised British critics, it was their subsequent fascination with a musical’s use of such an intriguing subject matter that appeared to have won over sixteen out of eighteen of them. My analysis ultimately will demonstrate that all of the elements of the Donmar’s production appeared so thoroughly integrated through its general concept of audience implication that the London critics often did not discuss these specifically musical elements (score and choreography) as apart from the production as a whole. Rather, British critics (positively) treated Parade as a compelling drama that just happened to be sung and danced. At times they failed to understand portions of the musical that necessitate a familiarity with American Southern history, and perhaps partially because of this, the majority did not draw parallels with some of Parade’s major themes and their own contemporary society and history as Britons. However, the production appeared to engage them in an emotional and intellectual way that did not rely on historical knowledge. Though they rarely directly referred to specific staging, all of their observations and commentaries pointed towards the direction and space as most integral to the production’s success and the implication and engagement techniques as most essential in creating an intense actor-audience relationship. The London production then demonstrated the potential of Parade that was not immediately apparent in the Broadway production. Despite British critics’ lack of exposure to the varied range of the musical form, their somewhat limited knowledge of American Southern history, and their initial doubts about the challenging subject matter, the London production overcame these obstacles, producing a work that effectively engaged spectators and critics alike. While all but two eventually warmed to the idea of what is essentially a musicalized lynching, British critics did voice an almost unanimous initial apprehension to such an “atypical” musical subject. It was while discussing Parade’s basic subject that the critics revealed a general lack of exposure to the form and its range of tones and topics. While all voiced misgivings about Parade’s subject matter at the beginnings of their reviews, by their conclusions almost all revealed a general pleasure in encountering what appeared to them as a welcome anomaly of the form. One of London’s most respected critics, Oxford-educated Michael Billington, The Guardian’s chief theatre critic since 1971, most succinctly presented the British critics’ characteristic response to a musical about the Leo Frank case: “As I watched this musical about racism and injustice in the Georgia of 1913, I wondered whether it would work even better as a docu-drama?”165 Billington’s reaction to Parade’s subject is unsurprising, as he has previously voiced the worry that the world identifies London with only a legendary string of hit musicals.

165 Michael Billington, “Musical Explores Roots of Southern Racism,” rev. of Parade, The Guardian 25 Sept. 2007, final ed.: 42. Only the first quote of a critic’s review will be cited in this way. Unless another work of the critic’s is quoted within this chapter, the reader can assume all quotes are from the initially cited review.

He also has admitted, however, that “only an arrant snob would deny that the musical has an important place in our [British] culture.”166 Though he seemed to pigeonhole the form by declaring that “it doesn’t take too much intelligence to guess whether [a] musical is going to work or not,”167 he determined that in regards to Parade, “the music and lyrics of Jason Robert Brown serve to reinforce rather than subvert the gripping story Alfred Uhry’s book has to tell.”168 Revealing his own experience with, and expectations of, musicals, he concluded his review with a generalization: “Musicals primarily deal with romance: it is refreshing to find one that deals so eloquently with the roots of Southern prejudice.” Billington possesses a definite idea of the musical form and the extent of its abilities. Of Ragtime, also set in America at the turn of the twentieth century, and touching on many of the same themes as Parade, Billington states, “This is a show that transcends the musical’s usual romantic angst and puny psychology.”169 Billington appeared to have little experience with the varied musicals of the New Voices which rarely focus on romance. While Billington demonstrated a somewhat limited notion of the range of topics that musicals both can and have addressed in the past, he did not express shock at Parade’s darkly serious choice of topic, but rather found it appropriately dealt with within the form. Many others, however, were outright skeptical of the musical form’s general abilities and range, and so viewed Parade as a positive anomaly and therefore a triumph of the form. Tim Walker, critic of the well-respected Sunday Telegraph, echoed Billington’s initial reaction and final assessment, yet while praising Parade as an anomaly, he also revealed his inexperience of the musical form by labeling this particular show “genuinely and oxymoronically, a sophisticated musical.”170 Strangely, only a year prior, Walker described another musical as “sophisticated,” yet with no mention of oxymora. Of this musical, he stated, “Blockbuster entertainment, sophisticated comedy and thought-provoking drama. It is magnificent to see a musical that manages to be both populist and intelligent at the same time.”171 The work he so enthusiastically praised was the brightly-colored, spectacle-driven, fairy tale musical, Wicked – a musical that essentially wipes out all political commentary inherent to its source material (a novel of the same title by Gregory Maguire). Despite his statements regarding oxymora, the fact that Walker recognized merit in both Wicked and Parade is indicative of his, as well as the majority of British critics’, openness to the varied range of the musical form.

166 Michael Billington, One Night Stands: A Critic’s View of Modern British Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books, 1993): xv. The general attitude that he expresses about the form in this work could quite possibly be explained by London’s musical production history which has been heavily dominated by revivals of classics, musical comedies, movie-turned-musicals, and some of Sondheim’s works.

167 Qtd. in Stefanova-Peteva 170.

168 Billington, “Musical Explores Roots of Southern Racism.”

169 Michael Billington, rev. of Ragtime, Piccadilly Theatre, The Guardian 20 Mar. 2003: 30.

170 Tim Walker, “On a Serious Note…” rev. of Parade, The Sunday Telegraph 30 Sept. 2007, sec. 7: 32.

171 Tim Walker, rev. of Wicked, rpt. on Wicked the Musical. 1 Mar. 2008 .

Only two critics never warmed to the idea of a musicalized Leo Frank case. MusicOMH.com’s sole theatre critic, Natasha Tripney, admitted, “Musicals, of course, don’t have to be all fluff and uplift, but in the case of this complex story, I would have preferred a more conventional dramatic approach.”172 She went on to state, “I just found the use of the musical form to explore such a grim, if fascinating, event, a little uncomfortable. Something about it didn’t sit well, for my tastes.” While Tripney helpfully revealed to readers the personal tastes informing her critique of Parade (which she ultimately deemed “too dark to be satisfying”), only one other critic seemed to share her preferences that the musical form not delve into the grim and complex. Christopher Hart of the Sunday Times did not possess Tripney’s misgivings of opinion, but found the general idea of Parade to be inappropriate: You begin to feel that serious issues are being ducked and continually glossed over, and that continually breaking into jolly song-and-dance routines in the midst of a corrupt trial about pedophile rape and murder is not quite, as we would say nowadays, appropriate behavior. Despite a valiant production, the end result leaves you feeling more than a little queasy.173 Whether or not Hart believed singing and dancing to be an appropriate response to a murder trial (history has shown that the people of Atlanta did indeed celebrate Frank’s conviction through such a cakewalk), there remains the fact that he missed the choreography’s significance in depicting both the disturbing extent and ease of the Southerner’s vengefulness, as well how quickly this reaction spiraled towards Frank’s tragic end.174 Despite Hart’s obvious aversion to the musical treatment of the subject, he makes an interesting point that only one other British critic raises: he surmises that the musical failed to fully contextualize the case.175 While most American critics found fault with the musical’s tendency to touch upon, but never delve into, various historically relevant issues – the possible rape, child labor, the African American experience at the turn of the century, etc. – British critics generally appeared to trust that a musical about America, created and directed by Americans, is an honest and thorough depiction of the subject. Or perhaps these critics simply did not find the lack of certain details distressing

172 Natasha Tripney, rev. of Parade, musicOMH.com 8 Oct. 2007 . According to its website (which receives approximately 400,000 hits per month), “MusicOMH.com is a diverse and completely independent reviews and features publication, covering music, films and theatre in London, the UK and beyond. Editorially it occupies a space somewhere between newspapers and specialist music magazines.” Because this website is both specialized and fairly popular, it seems fair to assume that Tripney’s generally negative review of Parade reached, and possibly affected the attendance of, a good number of potential spectators.

173 Christopher Hart, “Rather a Trying Experience,” rev. of Parade, Donmar Warehouse, Sunday Times 30 Sept. 2007, Culture sec.: 21.

174 Observed one journalist of Atlanta’s immediate reaction to Frank’s verdict, “The cry of guilty took winged flight from lip to lip. It traveled like the rattle of musketry. Then came a combined shout that rose to the sky. Hats went into the air. Women wept and shouted by turns” (qtd. in Oney 341).

175 That other critic is Michael Billington, who stated, “The musical doesn’t have time to set the story in context: in particular, the wave of anti-immigrant hostility that swept early 20th century America.”

when considering the work’s merit as a whole. Whatever the case, Hart did not reveal which issues he believed to be “glossed over,” but instead, used the valuable space allotted for his review in perpetuating misconceptions of the ability of the musical form, declaring that “musicals don’t handle sociohistorical complexities too well” due to “the simplicity of the form.” Only two out of the eighteen British critics, Tripney and Hart, shared the belief that the “simplicity” of the form lacks the capability to tell such a complex and somber story, and while there remained the possibility that their comments fed into any limiting ideas of musical theatre possessed by their readers, overall London critics offered an open-minded and positive view of the form and of this musical in particular.176 Hart, of course, represented only one end of the critical spectrum, which for the British, weighed heavily on the other, more positive end. Almost all demonstrated pleasant surprise at Parade, seemingly due to both its content and form. Quentin Letts, political columnist and chief theatre critic of the Daily Mail, happily declared that the plot “is not the normal stuff of musicals”177 and The Evening Standard’s long-standing critic, Nicholas de Jongh, asserted that Parade “is that rare thing: a piece of musical theatre . . . that dares to be serious.”178 Susannah Clapp, chief critic for The Observer since 1997, seconded de Jongh: “It’s that rare thing, a really surprising musical.”179 While these British critics do not often experience such unapologetically dark and serious-minded musicals, all but Hart and one other critic reacted positively to these aspects within Parade that they viewed as generally atypical of the form. Even if most believed, as Julie Carpenter of The Express did, that “it’s easy to wonder why such a serious subject has been given the musical treatment,” they almost always concluded, as did she, that Parade “is a memorable, enriching and emotionally impacting experience all around.”180 These critics appeared to admire Parade’s ambition in its subject matter, often to the point of being so caught up in the trial’s intricacies that they failed to discuss the elements that make Parade a musical. Hart’s admission that it was “essentially a courtroom drama” and Billington’s initial belief that perhaps it would work better as a docudrama (but ultimately works quite well as a musical), indicates that Parade cleverly tricked the British critics: the musical, surrounding a fascinating case that most British are unfamiliar with, passed itself as a drama that just happened to be sung and choreographed. Given the knowledge that the British critics were fascinated by Parade’s story, one would logically wonder if their appreciation was due to the topicality of the subject matter or if

176 While Hart’s review in the Times conceivably reached the most readers of any other critic, his negative review was more than likely balanced by chief critic Benedict Nightingale’s positive review in the same paper.

177 Quentin Letts, “Fight for Truth That’s Worth Singing About,” rev. of Parade, Daily Mail 28 Sept. 2007, first ed.: 63.

178 Nicholas de Jongh, “A Musical That Dares to Be Serious,” rev. of Parade, Evening Standard 25 Sept. 2007, Evening Standard Lite 8 Oct. 2007 .

179 Susannah Clapp, rev. of Parade, The Observer 30 Sept. 2007, Arts: 21.

180 Julie Carpenter, “Tuning into a Shocking Injustice,” rev. of Parade, The Express 28 Sept. 2007, first ed., Features: 53.

their fascination came from a self-imposed distancing (with the reaction “this happened in America, it didn’t/couldn’t happen here”). Bookwriter Alfred Uhry similarly wondered at this issue, commenting, “It means an awful lot to me to see all these London people so moved by a story that I thought was fairly narrow and wouldn’t have world appeal like this, but they seem to get it. So, I think the answer would be if you tell the truth on the stage, and you tell it well and imaginatively, people are going to get it.”181 Uhry’s reaction to the London reviews supports the idea that though the case was what initially drew spectators and critics alike into Parade’s story, the staging had an even greater part in the production’s success. Most British critics (including the sixteen who positively reviewed the production) seemed removed from the American tale of intolerance, but because of the staging’s impact, they were still drawn to engage with the production. British critics largely appeared to positively critique Parade based on its effectiveness in engaging them in the moment as spectator-jurors, rather than on how the historical subject might parallel contemporary British society (which has also experienced race- related trials overwhelmed by media frenzies). The British critics’ focus on their experience and participation as spectators of an American historical moment can be partially explained due to what seems to be a general lack of knowledge of the time in American history that Parade presents. A few of the British critics simply did not understand elements of the musical that relate directly to American Southern history. The most significant example of this occurred in regards to “The Old Red Hills of Home” and the essential Southern themes that the song highlights and manipulates. Neither its initial sentiment, nor its overall purpose as a framing device appeared to come across clearly to some of the British critics, and the most confused of these responses came from Hart: Sometimes they’re [the songs] are completely baffling. What are we to make of songs about the good ol’ red hills of Georgia? What exactly is the purpose of a song praising Dixie, sung by a partly black chorus, hymning the joys of growing cotton and “A way of life that’s pure / A truth that must endure / A land where honour lives and breathes / (And Jews and nigras hang from trees)”? I made that last line up, but you can see why. Is this stuff ironic, or is it really cornier than corn pone? I still don’t know, but I fear the latter.182 The Independent’s second-string theatre critic (and at one time, theatre director) Kate Bassett demonstrated the same lack of awareness, stating, “The prologue, set in the Civil War, seems largely pointless,”183 and “the attempts to draw comparisons with the American Civil War,” Julie

181 Alfred Uhry, Behind the Parade, DVD of interviews included in 2007 Parade Donmar Cast Recording, First Night Records, 2007.

182 I have already shown that Hart is not particularly fond of musicals, but here, failing to set the song in context for his readers, he demonstrated his lack of understanding of American Southern history, a history of a people who prided themselves in maintaining what they saw as an honorable way of life through an agrarian society. Had Hart realized this, perhaps he would have recognized that as the musical proceeds, the song (and the song’s motif) is indeed used ironically in later scenes (see chapter four for a complete analysis of the use and meaning of the song). As a side note, it would have been interesting, had he seen the Broadway production, to receive his response to that version of the musical, as it appears to more closely line up with his idea of Southern history.

183 Kate Bassett, rev. of Parade, The Independent 30 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

Carpenter contended, “are weak.” De Jongh also found the opening number a “far too respectful evocation of defeated Southerners.” Whether or not these British critics were fully informed of the circumstances surrounding the American Civil War and the idealized Southern society, or were simply not as sympathetic to these aspects because the history is not their own, they did not fully appreciate the significance of “The Old Red Hills of Home,” which largely provides the context and the frame for the musical. Yet even without an understanding of how this significant song works within Parade, they still appreciated the musical overall, which again points towards the production itself as the key factor in the musical’s overseas success. Perhaps due to these particular critics’ basic knowledge of American history, however, they tended to distance themselves and their own history from the musical’s topicality. De Jongh noted, “Parade also displays political concern and social conscience in dealing with anti- Semitism and racism, those bad, old traits in America’s deep South,” and Charles Spencer, chief critic of The Telegraph, stated, “The show does expose many of the fault lines in American society, exploring not only anti-Semitism, but also black Americans’ sense of grievance.”184 Both critics failed to acknowledge how Britons could relate to these issues, which is especially peculiar considering the large number of race-related crimes that occur in London. London Theatre Guide’s Caroline Bishop exemplifies this tendency of the British critics, declaring, “The musical is a desperately sad depiction of the political and social circumstances of the time which led a fish out of water to drown.”185 While her description of the musical is apt, she never draws comparisons to her country’s own experiences with such “political and social circumstances.” She and her fellow critics could have easily done this by invoking the name of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who was killed in a racist attack by a group of white youths in London in 1993.186 Similar to the Frank case, the handling of Lawrence’s murder investigation was clearly corrupted by racism, resulting in a national outcry due to the failure to convict the obviously guilty white suspects. Of course, other race-related trials have occurred in England even more recently than Lawrence’s, and so, this discussion of such crimes in relation to only America (historically and contemporarily) seems rather strange. Intriguingly, four years prior to Parade’s London premiere, these same critics recognized the urgent topicality of another American musical that tells a piece of American history. In his review of Ragtime, The Times’s Benedict Nightingale observed that the issues that that musical raises are “all too familiar to us today. Think denial of justice, think frustration and obsession,

184 Charles Spencer, “A Disturbingly Topical Original,” rev. of Parade, The Telegraph 25 Sept. 2007: 26. Perhaps because Spencer considers Parade’s topicality obvious, he only references a contemporary parallel in his review’s title.

185 Caroline Bishop, rev. of Parade, Official London Theatre Guide 25 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

186 The inquiry into Lawrence’s death did not take place until 1998, nearly five years following the crime. Richard Norton-Taylor, a journalist for The Guardian, adapted the inquiry into a tribunal play that premiered in London in 1999 – just five months after the inquiry came to an end. Because The Colour of Justice premiered only eight years before Parade, there remains the possibility that many of the critics reviewed both productions, thereby making their failure to draw comparisons between England and America’s race-related crimes somewhat strange.

think vengeance by suicide bombing.”187 While some British critics fiercely disliked Ragtime (some stated it floundered in its sentimentality, while others labeled it sanctimonious or too politically correct), most positively reviewed it, and almost all acknowledged the parallels between the musical’s discussion of terrorism and the “War on Terror” that was just then beginning the year it premiered on the West End. Despite the clear comparisons between American history and current world issues, Nightingale worried, “Is the musical too American for London? That’s what I had feared.” Though Nightingale ultimately concluded, as most did, that it was not, he raised an interesting point that is equally applicable to his and his fellow critics’ reception not only of Parade, but of so many other inherently American musicals. Was Parade “too American” for British audiences? Despite their general lack of familiarity with the history of the American South, the answer appears to be “no.” But because British critics did not draw many contemporary parallels to their own current situations from the American history being depicted in Parade as they did with Ragtime, one wonders if Ragtime was unique in its accomplishment to highlight such comparisons. Perhaps such parallels were so obvious to critics in Ragtime’s case because it discussed terrorism while also premiering during a height of terror- related anxiety, while Parade’s racial topicality was not as readily apparent due to the lack of current high-profile hate crimes at the time of its premiere. While the majority of British critics disregarded or failed to recognize parallels between England and America’s race-related crimes, de Jongh, Spencer, and Bishop all drew comparisons between Parade and The Crucible.188 That both American works demonstrate “just how easy it is to fan horror into vengeful hysteria”189 and depict false sexual allegations from young girls190 seemed to impact critics more than the commentary on racial tensions. Altogether, only six critics made any kind of statement regarding Parade’s current relevancy (in 2007), and among those critics, the production’s strong depiction of the media frenzy that fed the Southerners’ mob mentality seemed to make the strongest impression. Spencer noted, “One can’t help but be reminded of the Madeleine McCann case, which sparked similarly wild allegations, a press feeding frenzy and a dangerous, desperate determination to find a scapegoat.”191 While Letts also made this specific contemporary parallel, others simply referred to Parade’s tale as “sadly” or “unnervingly” topical.192 Due to the few references to the McCann case and to The Crucible, it appears that the critics were generally most taken in by the frenzied tone and participatory feel

187 Benedict Nightingale, “A Dance to the Music of Ragtime,” rev. of Ragtime, The Times 20 Mar. 2003, Features: 19.

188 This comparison can be partially accounted for by the RSC’s recent production of the Arthur Miller classic in 2006 that garnered great critical acclaim.

189 Spencer.

190 Bishop and de Jongh.

191 Four-year-old British Madeleine McCann was visiting Portugal with her family when she disappeared from their resort on May 3, 2007. Suspects include some local Portuguese men and her parents, and there are suspicions of pedophilia as well. At the time of this thesis’s publication, the little girl had not been found, nor the case been solved.

192 Bennett and Walker, respectively.

of the piece. Conversely, The New York Times’s Ben Brantley concluded that the Broadway production failed largely because it ineffectively presented the “wrong man” plot by lacking those necessary feelings of urgency and vicarious implication. It seems that British critics found that the London production successfully presented this Hitchcockian element of the musical. Because it apparently did this so effectively, any lack of understanding of Southern American history and the role or meaning of the musical score was, though not overlooked, perhaps viewed as less central when considering the intrigue of the case and the production’s depiction of a media frenzy that powerfully affected and engaged them (emotionally and intellectually) as spectators who were currently experiencing such a frenzy regarding the McCann girl. Because so many critics did not pinpoint any of Parade’s issues as relevant to contemporary England, it is interesting to observe that only one referenced Lila’s persistent presence onstage. If “The Old Red Hills of Home” confused them, how is it that Lila’s “ghost” did not garner equal frustration? Only three critics referenced Lila, and only one did so directly. In his discussions of the actors’ performances, Walker stated, “There is a chilling turn . . . from Jayne [sic] Wisener, who haunts the stage like the little girl in red from Schindler’s List.” While a fitting comparison, Walker did not illuminate how Lila, much like that little girl in the Holocaust film, worked within the narrative (and along with “The Old Red Hills of Home” motif) to consistently remind and warn spectators of the Southerners’ misguided purposes. Rather, Walker referred only to the emotional tone that her presence aided. Two other mentions of the Civil War, however, can be construed as indirect references to Lila. The Stage’s critic, Lisa Martland, stated that in Parade, “The shadow of the Civil War is never far away” (Lila would then be the physical representation of that shadow) and Bassett complained that Ashford’s use of doubling was rather confusing.193 That the critics did not mention the significant use of Lila potentially ties in with their limited knowledge of American Southern society and its inherent pride. The power of Parade for British critics, if not arising entirely due to the history itself, would have to be accounted for in other aspects of the production, including the characters themselves and specifically their development throughout the show. With the majority of British critics receiving Parade as an intriguing story and not one necessarily that directly related to them as British subjects, it is fascinating to observe their responses to the difficult character of Leo Frank. While American critics generally found him too hard and unsympathetic despite his obvious innocence (as depicted in the Broadway production), their British counterparts viewed him as an intriguingly complex character who appropriately evinced ambiguity regarding his innocence. Bertie Carvel’s “wonderfully insect-like,” “twitches and all” take on Leo Frank created a lead character “who’s both pitiable and liable to excite suspicion.”194 Carvel then did not present a gilded victim, but rather, as Bassett observed, Frank was a lead character who was “disturbingly inscrutable.” Billington concisely offered the general critical reception of Leo: “Carvel’s Frank has just enough neurotic primness and clinical detachment to suggest why his

193 Lisa Martland, rev. of Parade, The Stage 25 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 . All but two of the musical’s many characters were doubled in the London production, yet despite Martland’s remark, the only real confusion resulted from the Lila/Mary pairing, as it was not until late in the production that one may have recognized Lila’s full purpose.

194 Carpenter, Letts, and Clapp, respectively.

initial reaction to the crime aroused misgivings.”195 As Variety’s foreign correspondent David Benedict observed, Carvel “indicates outsider status yet never pleads for sympathy. When, at the trial, he floats the heartfelt phrase ‘I stand before you now / Incredibly afraid,’ the rapt silence in the auditorium is remarkable.”196 British critics seemed to not only accept the lead character’s general coldness and the possibility of his guilt, but also appeared to fully believe and appreciate his transformation from a “wholly unlikable creep” (as Hart referred to him) into a more compassionate and emotionally available man due to the traumatic experience of the murder trial. There remains, of course, the possibility that the positive response to Leo may have been due largely to the ambiguity of the character (as presented in the London production only). This could then indicate that New York critics may have had an entirely different reaction to Leo had the Broadway production focused less on the certainty of his innocence, and more on a slightly more open interpretation of the case. Such a depiction and reception of Leo Frank as an ambiguous and (un)sympathetic character is directly connected to the relationship between him and Lucille as well as to the production’s overall tone. While British critics found the production’s dark tone fitting for the tale being told, they were of mixed mind regarding the slowly developing romance, and quite a few even found the romance itself problematic. Lucille is no femme fatale (nor could she ever be depicted as one), and though her courage and determination in clearing her husband’s name of the crime is admirable and even winningly engaging in a twist on the typical romance, she has little to do with the case itself. I would like to suggest that the critics who found the romance both believable and emotionally powerful were perhaps those who, because they enjoy romantic plots and have come to expect them in musicals, look for the romantic convention of the traditional musical form. For those who viewed the romance as “clumsy,” I would argue that they received it as such because it unnecessarily took focus away from the case. They would then have viewed the romance as problematic because, as spectator-jurors, they were not involved in those portions of the show. One of London’s major critics, Benedict Nightingale of The Times, suggested, however, that it was not just the romance, but the development of Frank’s character that was difficult to believe. He declared that the same primness in Frank’s character that Michael Billington found so effective “comes close to convincing you of the authors’ wishful belief: that being on death row changes Leo from a driven fusspot into a mature man and loving husband.”197 Nightingale, however, seemed to be alone in his critique that Frank’s transformation from cold and exacting in act one to warm and affectionate in act two was not believable enough. Some critics, such as David Benedict, appreciated what he viewed as the production’s subtle switch from the hysterical trial to the sentimental romance (which he afforded to Ashford’s direction demonstrating a controlled restraint), though he did point out that the emotional climax occurred rather late, during the couple’s duet, “All the Wasted Time,” though it was still sung “exultantly to the point of ecstasy.” The Hollywood Reporter’s foreign correspondent, Ray Bennett agreed,

195 Michael Billington, “Musical Explores Roots of Southern Racism.”

196 David Benedict, rev. of Parade, Variety 25 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

197 Benedict Nightingale, “Small-stage Setting Brings Intensity to Sombre Lament from the Deep South,” rev. of Parade, The London Times 26 Sept. 2007, Home News: 28.

stating, “While the tragedy and horror of Frank’s fate are fully rendered, Ashford’s staging also puts the marriage of Leo and Lucille at center stage allowing Bertie Carvel and Lara Pulver to balance the story’s grim elements with the soaring optimism of genuine love and devotion.”198 Though Benedict and Bennett noted what they viewed as a balanced tone, approximately half of the British critics failed to mention the romantic plot with any significance at all. This can be explained by the fact that if critics do not find an element exceptional or problematic, they perhaps prefer to spend their limited space on elements of the production that they deem more pertinent. Knowing this, we can generally deduce that half of the critics did not find the romance distracting, under-utilized, or adroitly rendered, but rather that it was adequately employed within the story’s development. While most critics either failed to mention the romance at all or agreed with Caroline Bishop that the romantic duet was “an achingly touching scene,” some like The Independent’s chief critic, Paul Taylor, and Time Out’s Caroline McGinn found it underwritten and rather clumsy.199 Intriguingly in opposition to their American counterparts, many British critics found the inclusion of the romance problematic. Some, like Hart, viewed the general idea of the blossoming romance hard to believe, arguing, “May she [Lucille] not have felt more doubt and disgust?”200 And while de Jongh declared Parade to be an overall “devastating, emotional show,” he felt that act two’s pace flagged because it spent “too much [time] grieving over the dead girl and turning the Franks into passionate lovers, [and] too little in showing what a national furor the case caused.” Julie Carpenter agreed, declaring that act two lacked momentum, while Quentin Letts simply stated that Lucille’s campaign to save her husband was “less exciting than the horrible business of his persecution.” To a frustrated many, the romance notably slowed the frenzied pace which had been steadily building since the discovery of Mary’s body in act one, as well as unnecessarily retracted focus from the case and its aftermath. The romance was then seemingly viewed as removing the critics’ (and all other audience members’) roles as spectator- jurors, leaving them little to do but watch the romance unfold, whereas before, they had been actively attempting to “solve” the case through their implication as jurors. While the romantic plot of Parade affects the overall tone of the piece, the general feel of a musical is largely dependent on and established through the music and choreography, as each greatly aids the development of the story. The score is particularly significant in Parade as a majority of the musical is sung-through, and so it is especially peculiar that, like New York critics, British critics spend so little time discussing this vital element within their reviews. Their characteristic discussion of Parade’s music was almost entirely limited to 1) comparisons to

198 Ray Bennett, rev. of Parade, The Hollywood Reporter 26 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

199 Caroline McGinn, rev. of Parade, Time Out 1 Oct. 2007, 21 Oct. 2007 . Paul Taylor, “Daring and Ambitious Musical Vindicated,” rev. of Parade, The Independent 25 Sept. 2007, first ed., News: 12.

200 Hart forgot that Lucille does in fact demonstrate doubt when she initially tells Leo that she will not be attending the trial: “The trial. I – I don’t think I can stand it. . . . I don’t want everybody staring at me when they say all those awful things about you [Leo] in the courtroom. . . . And the mother of that poor little girl! I don’t want to see her!” (Brown and Uhry, unpublished libretto 38). Lucille not only wants to avoid the invasive press and the stress of a trial, but these lines reveal her uncertainty regarding her husband’s innocence as well.

Sondheim’s work that almost always went undeveloped and always concluded in Sondheim’s favor, 2) listings of the different musical styles that Brown utilized – ragtime, gospel, blues, folk, etc. – without further explanation as to how those styles were relevant to the story and its development), and 3) most frequently, the use of empty adjectives such as Hart’s description of Brown’s score as “tuneful” and “inventive” which does not offer the reader a clear indication of how the music works within the show. This limited discussion of the music could demonstrate that British critics generally did not posses the knowledge to speak astutely regarding the score’s function, but it could also indicate that they simply did not take especial notice of the music (which could possibly be explained by a multitude of reasons including their finding the music not especially impressive to take space away from discussing the other elements such as the complex story). This latter tendency of the British critics could then support the argument that such neglect of the music was perhaps due to its skillful integration within the musical, possibly indicating that they primarily viewed Parade as more of a drama that just happened to be sung.201 A few critics, however, did discuss the music in more revelatory terms, demonstrating how the score’s frequent musical counterpoint provided the same push and pull as the characters themselves demonstrated when vying for the audience’s favor. Only three critics touched on how integral the score is to Parade’s development as a whole and how it affected their experiences as spectators.202 Making a comparison to Charles Ives’s music, Paul Taylor declared of Parade, “At its finest, the score has a similar volatile, democratic impulse to send incongruent musical styles (military marches, hymns, dances, popular songs) swarming against one another in a rich, middling mix.” While he did not offer a specific instance of such an impulse within the musical, he did hit upon how Parade’s score with its tendency towards bitonality ultimately operates on the whole to demonstrate conflicting forces within the early twentieth century South.203 Nightingale made the same point when he asserted, “The parade that gives the musical its title seems a jaunty affair, with Atlantans and their belles prancing in smiling commemoration of Dixie’s doings in the Civil War. But it comes in ironic counterpoint to the tale of Leo Frank . . .”204 Here, Nightingale offered a more vivid description of the ways in which Brown’s music works to convey ironic contrast to the events it accompanies, and ultimately develops, as well. Billington was the only critic who acknowledged how the score aided character development, though he did not specify any songs or musical styles: “The contrast between Frank’s alien status and the close-knit communal values of the South is established through the songs: the Brooklyn-born numbers have a Sondheimish sense of

201 Because I have looked over many of these critics’ reviews of other musicals produced in London within a few years of Parade’s premiere (including Ragtime, The Lion King, Jerry Springer: the Opera, and Brown’s The Last Five Years), I believe that British critics are certainly as capable as New York critics of discussing the musical scores.

202 Out of all the British critics who reviewed Parade, these three – Billington, Nightingale, and Taylor – most consistently speak explicitly of music and how it works within a show when reviewing musicals. Of the three, Billington appears the most frequently insightful in revealing a score’s role within a musical’s story.

203 See chapter four for my description of the use of the “Old Red Hills of Home” motif within the cakewalk at the conclusion of the trial.

204 Nightingale, “Small Stage Setting…”

solitude while the Atlantans express themselves through traditional Southern forms.”205 Billington and his colleagues thus pointed out the constant dynamic of the production. Each character or group of characters were associated with specific styles or musical motifs and these melodic lines are often placed in counterpoint, or against each other, just like the characters themselves when attempting to sway the audience to their favor. As with the score, only ten critics mentioned choreography in any notable capacity, but also as with the score, those who did expound on its role within the show demonstrated how dance worked to aid in their participation as spectator-jurors. The choreographic element of Parade is not nearly as central as the musical score, but because of director Ashford’s background as a choreographer, it certainly was significant for this production, as it (in conjunction with the music) was what largely built the atmosphere of furor and frenzy that ostensibly led to the British critics’ strongest emotional and intellectual connection (the media frenzy) with the work. In the Donmar production, only three (out of twenty-eight) musical numbers incorporated a great deal of choreography, and because the cakewalk at the trial’s conclusion is the most significant (and horrifying), critics tended to focus on that number and how it swept them, as spectators, into the Southerners’ hysteria. Caroline McGinn’s overall impression of the choreography offered the most apt and vivid description as to how dance worked in relation to the story: It’s the hick-psychotic energy to Ashford’s crowd-scene choreography that brings the show to the boil, stirring up every snatch of Confederate march music, innocent popular ballad and simmering blues, and peaking in a wildly vengeful courtroom cakewalk, where the mob hoists its scapegoats high and hammers the red earth with invisible hoes. Bassett supplemented McGinn’s clear description by describing “nightmarish whirling stomps” (though she did not indicate where these occurred within the narrative it is fair to assume she referred to the cakewalk), and most critics followed suit with similarly somewhat vague descriptions. De Jongh, however, clarified the purpose of the crowd’s lurid movement: “The expressionistic scene when the judge hands down a death sentence, the chorus dancing in grotesque mockery of Carvel, conveys the crucial sense of Southern fanaticism.” Here, de Jongh managed not only to describe the feeling that the ghastly dance conveyed, but also the manner in which it built the intensity of the Southerners’ horrifying obsession with convicting the innocent Frank. And, of course, at the Donmar, the ubiquitous Southerners, in their close proximity to (and at times, infiltration of) the audience worked to pull spectators along, drawing them into their mad passion. As with their discussions of the music, Billington and Benedict provided the most telling descriptions of the choreography and its seamlessness in entering and developing the story. “Best of all,” Billington asserted, “is the courtroom cakewalk, full of riotous energy, that coincides with the sickening confirmation of Frank’s sentence.” He continued, declaring that Ashford “shows a priceless ability to allow dance to erupt naturally from the action.” While Billington’s praise of the choreography came from what is now an expected tradition of the element within the form – that it “erupt[s] naturally from the action” – his inclusion of this observation of Parade’s dance element seems to indicate a lack of exposure to the number of musicals that incorporate such thoroughly integrated choreography. Benedict offered the same praise, but was more straightforward with his reasoning:

205 Billington, “Musical Explores Roots of Southern Racism.”

The gruesome cakewalk at the end of act one, with bewildered Leo and Lucille hoisted aloft on chairs in a whirligig of distortion, is one of few moments in which Ashford allows audiences to see a choreographer at work. The rest of the time, most of all whenever the two leads are onstage, this production feels like genuine drama. Though, as stated earlier, only three musical numbers incorporated a significant amount of dance work, choreographed movement occurred throughout the production.206 What Benedict highlighted, then, was this production’s subtle and natural use of stylized movement to tell the story, even during a non-“dance” number. Such a subtle touch drew focus to the story, rather than to the (dance) performances, demonstrating a natural integration that prompted Benedict to view the production as a drama, not as a musical. As Martland put it, Parade’s “flaws do not leave a lasting impression, what does is the dramatic power of the majority of scenes when book and score gel so well.”207 British critics appeared genuinely impressed by such an integration, which may account for their failure to mention the elements individually, as they seemed to view them as parts of a seamless whole.

Conclusion: The Donmar Factor

Why is it that this miniscule Covent Garden theatre can do almost anything better than anyone else? . . . Once again the Donmar has produced gold out of what was once thought to be a non- mineable vein of music-theatre. - Critic Michael Darvell on Parade208

When it is this much smaller piece . . . interestingly, it’s a much more political show. . . . You can grasp the larger pictures more easily. . . . The show becomes much more about the larger panorama. It’s an interesting paradox, but I think the smaller the show got, the more we understood the scope of the piece. - Jason Robert Brown209

Despite Brown and Uhry’s largely beneficial alterations to script and score and the London production’s strong concept of implication, the overall effect of sweeping spectators into the hysteria of the case would not have been nearly as effective in a theatre such as the Vivian Beaumont in New York. It is ironic then, that in Nightingale’s review of Parade’s original Broadway production, he wondered, “Might the evening gain intensity in a smaller space, like

206 See footnote on page 17 of chapter four describing the scene between Leo and Mary for an example of this stylized movement.

207 Martland never pinpointed these “flaws.” She simply stated that “there is still some editing to do and occasionally it becomes a little self indulgent.”

208 Michael Darvell, rev. of Parade, The Classical Source 26 Sept. 2007, 8 Oct. 2007 .

209 Behind the Parade, DVD.

our own Donmar?”210 As stated earlier, he belatedly proved his point, declaring that the musical did indeed gain intensity in the smaller venue, though he never explained exactly why that intensity was vital or how the space provided it. While only six critics mentioned the utilization of space in their reviews, and one, Darvell, insisted that Parade succeeded despite what he saw as the confines of the Donmar, the other four helped to clarify the success of the production in this particular space. Clapp observed that in the Donmar the “the small space vibrates with disturbance,” while Martland noted that the staging “sustains an intense intimacy, both in the large set pieces and in the final emotional stages of Act II when Frank and wife Lucille rediscover their love for each other.” But it was David Benedict who described Oram’s two-level set and consequentially how the production produced those feelings of disturbance and intimacy: Oram builds on the piece’s metaphor of the (mis)use of power by constructing a balcony along the back wall, with its balustrade joining that of the upper seating gallery. This creates an additional level from which actors can dictate to the action below and turns the square auditorium into an enveloping courtroom, with audiences glued to the action on three sides. Benedict hit on Oram’s ability to manipulate the small space by transforming it into a courtroom, and though he observed that such a design drew the audience’s focus to the action, it was not until the final sentence of his review that he expounded somewhat on how Ashford’s staging produced that intense intimacy: “With the action played rather than displayed, audiences are constantly drawn in.” While he never directly referred to the actors’ direct address to spectators, or their constant presence within the audience and throughout the small auditorium, he was the only critic who most clearly hinted that the key to the success of Parade was Ashford’s intimate staging within the very intimate space. Walker’s feeling that “the whole thing seems a lot bigger than the stage on which it is played” somewhat hinted at this as well. Though most critics did not directly address the key factor of this production – the audience-actor dynamic – the fact that almost all positively reviewed the show denotes that even without acknowledging specifically how the staging worked, they still recognized that it did. Close analysis reveals that they appeared open to new variations within the form (whether partially due to novelty or not), and while never stated directly, British critics implied through their discussions of all elements – book, score, choreography, design – that the implication and engagement techniques utilized within the production were what made it effective overall. Ultimately, the critical responses to both the Broadway and London productions reveal (despite differences in venue, marketing, and the various production elements) three generalities in their criticisms: 1) American critics (in addition to discussing the work as a whole) possess a greater tendency to discuss (and perhaps to recognize) the merits of the elements of the musical form separately and in their own rights, 2) British critics generally seem to base criticism largely on how convincing the work is as a dramatic whole (only infrequently pinpointing the music or choreography in a specific capacity), and, most telling of all, 3) both American and British critics appear equal in their general failure (or perhaps disinclination) to distinguish the values of the musical work from the values of its production. Furthermore, close readings of the British criticism reveal an intriguing response to inherently American works such as Parade: a potentiality exists that such musicals (or specific portions/themes of those musicals) may in fact be “too American,” possibly due to their

210 Benedict Nightingale, “Virtue Rains on this Parade,” rev. of Parade, Vivian Beaumont Theater, The London Times 29 Dec. 1998, Features.

topicality as well as in their reliance on significantly historical bases. While beyond the scope of this project, further research on how British critics and audiences approach and receive innately American musicals – whether they purposefully distance themselves from a work’s “foreignness” or they position themselves in some way to take on the musical’s “Americanness” as their own – would certainly help to reveal how and why such thoroughly American musicals are so popular (or unsuccessful) overseas.

EPILOGUE

I think that an audience for a musical comes in expecting to see a musical. I know that sounds reductive, but people who go to see a musical are expecting a certain kind of commercial entertainment. They’re expecting a certain amount of base-level “we’re here to entertain you” values in a piece of musical theater, and they get hostile when that’s not delivered to them. The difference between a serious show like South Pacific and a serious show like Parade is that South Pacific has . . . a lot of very light and comic numbers, and a lot of conventions. . . . While it’s a serious show that accomplishes a lot of things that no musical before it had accomplished, it does it by referencing backwards. There are only two moments in Parade that we do old-style entertainment. . . . I think there are some spectacular songs, some real musical and theatrical coups, in Parade that nobody mentions if they’re people who want a musical to be what a “musical” is. - Jason Robert Brown211

The American musical is one of the most popular theatrical forms, yet so little is written about it. While scholarship in the field is growing (if slowly), it has so far produced few works that attempt to seriously analyze the form and all of its artistic elements. Those scholars who do write successfully about musical theatre tend to focus on one aspect of the form – book, score, or choreography – and by doing so, fail to account for its remarkable ability to collaborate with so many artistic forms in its creation of unified works. The New Voices, such as Jason Robert Brown, are virtually absent from this small field of scholarship that focuses almost entirely on works from “The Golden Age” and those of Stephen Sondheim. Lack of analysis of these artists’ works, while possibly due to their more unconventional choices in subject matter and musical composition, as well as their lack of commercial success, is precisely what prompted this project. In my work, I have attempted to address this gap in musical theatre scholarship by offering thorough analysis of all of the musical’s artistic components, both in theory (the potential of the work as based on its score and book) and in practice (the ways in which it works onstage and engages audiences). In addition, by analyzing critical reviews, I have utilized the major source of analysis available outside of my own, and in doing so have highlighted the thoughts of the select few who almost entirely shape the discussion of musical theatre for their audiences: the critics. To perform this analysis, I specifically chose Parade, a work that I find both intelligent and moving and accessible in all its complexity. Yet this work has been consistently and somewhat detrimentally labeled as “unconventional” within the form. What is a musical? To determine (un)conventionality within the form, one first needs to define what the form is. Some scholars say there are three subgenres of musical theatre – musical comedy, operetta, and opera – but where does that leave a work like Parade? Or, even more baffling, a piece such as Contact that tells its story purely through dance that is set to pre- recorded music without any live singing? How is one even to compare the two? It appears that there must be a comparison, at least where many critics and scholars are concerned. How else can a critic determine where a piece falls in the trajectory of (musical) theatre, or even determine the work’s worth if he or she does not recognize it as fitting into a structured category of theatre

211 Qtd. in Bryer 30-1.

with a clear set of conventions and traditions? Composer Jason Robert Brown reflects on this insistence on definition and conventions: With Parade, we were attempting very deliberately to do something new, something that nobody had seen before. I think that our intent to do something that was entirely new was the thing that stabbed us. It may be that after another twenty years, when people are more used to the way we were trying to tell a story, that Parade will then be seen as having been before its time and very progressive. People will come and see it, and because the storytelling conventions we were using will now be things they understand, they’ll be able to sit and watch it and say, “I can’t understand why this show wasn’t a huge hit. It’s the most wonderful, accessible piece of theater ever.”212 Parade employs methods that its creators felt best suited Leo Frank’s story, and therefore it may also produce certain kinds of pleasure that spectators do not necessarily or often associate with musicals. Does it matter if those methods and pleasures are traditional, unconventional, or an amalgamation of both if the musical is staged in such a way as to make those techniques and emotional/intellectual responses effective and engaging? It does, but only in the sense that, for whatever reason, Parade and so many other new and challenging works are neglected within the field, both by producers and scholars alike. Analysis of the reviews of both of Parade’s productions, however, reveals many of the elements that do matter in producing a successful musical onstage. While the experience of the musical form is slightly different overseas than in New York where critics are exposed to a larger array of musicals, what is strikingly significant is how similar the American and British reviews are in one crucial way: their criticisms rarely differentiate between the production and the musical itself. This major failing in criticism is most troubling because there is the potential for such a lack of differentiation to occur with any new work, not just Parade and not just musicals. Strong directorial and design choices, of course, have the ability to highlight, overpower, detract from, or bring new meaning to any work, and while the artistic choices employed in a production offer the possibility of turning an average play into a great one, they also possess the power to obfuscate those aspects in a work that make it so compelling. While it is not necessarily a simple task to distinguish all features (such as, and especially, the tone) that are inherent to a work from those that are added through direction, it is vital that critics make an effort to do so. Without such differentiation, it is easy to dismiss a work or imply such a dismissal, when in actuality it may be the production that failed in its support and depiction of the work. Perhaps such distinctions are even more vital when analyzing musical productions. It is difficult, after only a single viewing/hearing, to accurately recall and assess staging, design, and performances in addition to the intricacies of plot. To also successfully analyze the thematic and atmospheric use of choreography and music, especially of those musical scores that work to develop multiple meanings, is exceptionally challenging. Nevertheless, critics must make the effort to consider such elements, as well as those elements’ potential outside of a particular production, as it is mainly their commentary and analysis that greatly shapes and informs the discussion of musical theatre, as well as the perspectives of spectators. Successfully creating such a distinction between the work and the production not only allows for a higher possibility of future productions, but it also potentially encourages scholarly analysis of works that may not receive such attention otherwise.

212 Qtd in Bryer 32.

Along the same lines, a director must also be aware of a musical’s specific qualities and structure so that he or she may highlight, rather than suppress, that particular musical’s methods and insights. Must a director possess a musical ear if taking on a musical production? Of course, to a certain extent, that is indeed vital. To truly understand how any musical works to convey meaning, one must be sensitive to how the score plays a part in creating that meaning. Without such an understanding and sensitivity, musicals are vulnerable to highly conceptual, stylized techniques that can possibly override or suppress the imperative function of the music. Such a disregard for how effective the music can be on its own (or perhaps an assumption that the audience needs a certain amount of help in understanding the meaning that the score exports) can result in a lack of understanding of characters or themes, or an overwhelming of information, both visually and aurally. I believe this is what happened in the case of Parade’s Broadway production; while artistic choices such as the noir lighting and some of the stylized staging techniques made theoretical sense in their selection to depict Leo Frank’s story, their use did not work effectively in production. The complexity of the case, and the ways in which the music of Parade works to develop character and themes (which the condensed libretto does not have time to expound on), seem to require a simpler, more focused directorial concept, such as that employed by the London premiere. The minimal design and audience implication concept drew focus to the choreography and music, allowing those elements clear and full expression to convey their multiple meanings amidst a large cast of characters and a variety of complex issues. The largely laudatory critical response to the London production, despite the general lack of differentiation between the production choices and the musical’s inherent qualities, supports this idea that the visual simplification allowed for aural understanding of Parade and so created an effective and engaging production. Parade, however, is only one challenging work among a vast number of musicals whose full potential, artistically and intellectually, have yet to be thoroughly explored and analyzed. How many others of the New Voices’ musicals will receive the second chance that Parade received with its London premiere? Will The Wild Party? Or Floyd Collins? I am not suggesting that the original New York productions of these other musicals were similarly as problematic as I believe was the case with Parade’s Broadway premiere. However, the potential of these works, as with all musicals, may have suffered, as Parade did, from the same lack of distinction by critics between the works and their productions, or from artistic choices that demonstrated a lack of understanding of their specific structures and the musical and choreographic elements utilized in conveying their meanings and insights. Would, for example, the New York critics alter their opinions of Parade if they had had the opportunity to see the London production? I believe they would. Some of the fussiness about “glossed over” issues may still remain (Parade is, after all, the telling of a piece of American history), but generally, yes, I think they would retract many of their original criticisms. Such an altered opinion of Parade would then be due to a better understanding of the musical through the Donmar production’s example of how it can work to effectively emotionally and intellectually engage audiences. This appreciation and understanding of how the musical works as an integrated whole, both on the page and on the stage, is what I have attempted to accomplish with my analyses of Parade and its productions’ critical receptions. I hope the field continues to grow so as to provide thorough and unrestrictive analyses of all of the New Voices’ musicals and their productions, and I hope it will embrace, rather than dismiss, future generations of New Voices and their challenging contributions.

APPENDIX

REFERENCES

Andrews, Richard. The London Theatre Guide. London: Metro Publications, 2003. Barbour, David. “The Dream of Atlanta.” Entertainment Design Apr. 1999: 43+. Barnes, Clive. “Parade Passes Muster.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. New York Post 27 Dec. 1998, 33. Bassett, Kate. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Independent 30 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 . Behind the Parade. DVD of interviews included in 2007 Parade Donmar Cast Recording. First Night Records, 2007. Benedict, David. “Ashford Welcomes Director Status.” Variety 14 Sept. 2007. 30 Oct. 2007. . ---. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Variety 25 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 . Bennett, Ray. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Hollywood Reporter 26 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 . Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. New York: Routledge, 1997. Bernardo, Melissa Rose, interview with Doug Leeds. “Working in the Theatre: Critics.” American Theatre Wing Seminar Series. Jan. 2006. 3 Nov. 2007 . Billington, Michael. “Musical Explores Roots of Southern Racism.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Guardian 25 Sept. 2007, final ed.: 42. ---. One Night Stands: A Critic’s View of Modern British Theatre. London: Nick Hern Books, 1993. ---. Rev. of Ragtime. Piccadilly Theatre. The Guardian 20 Mar. 2003: 30. Bishop, Caroline. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Official London Theatre Guide 25 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 . Brantley, Ben. “Martyr’s Requiem Invokes Justice.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. New York Times 18 Dec. 1998, final ed.: E1. Ben Brantley, “Searching for Happy Chorus Girls and Finding Plays,” The New York Times 31 Dec. 2000, late ed.: 3. Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. Eighth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Brown, Jason Robert. Interview with Gregory Bossler. “New Voices: Jason Robert Brown.” The Dramatist 2 (1999): 18-24.

---. Interview with Thomas Cott. “A Conversation with Jason Robert Brown.” Lincoln Center Theater, New York. 13 Jan. 1999. 29 Jan. 2008 . ---. “Notes from London.” Jason Robert Brown. 25 Aug. 2007. 26 Nov. 2007 . ---. Parade. Orch. Don Sebesky. Perf. Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello. Con. Eric Stern. RCA Victor, 1999. ---. Personal Interview. 22 July 2007. New York. ---. “Re: Parade question…” E-mail to author in response to query regarding Prince’s agitprop and noir techniques. 8 Feb. 2008. ---. “Re: Parade: Rosser’s Song?” E-mail to author in response to query regarding a university production of Parade that included a song for Rosser. 7 Apr. 2008. ---. “Revival.” Jason Robert Brown. 7 Oct. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 . Brown, Jason Robert and Alfred Uhry. Interview with Thomas Cott. “A Conversation with Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown.” Lincoln Center Theater, New York. 27 Jan. 1999. 5 Nov. 2006 . ---. Parade. Donmar Warehouse Final Draft. Unpublished libretto. 28 Sept. 2007. ---. Parade. The New American Musical: An Anthology from the End of the Century. Ed. Wiley Hausam. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003. Brustein, Robert. “The Function of Theatre Criticism at the Present Time.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 36.6 (Mar. 1983): 17-27. Bryer, Jackson R. and Richard A. Davison, ed. The Art of the American Musical. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Canby, Vincent. “Pedigree Versus Play: The Mystery of Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. The New York Times 27 Dec. 1998, final ed., sec. 2: 5. Carpenter, Julie. “Tuning Into a Shocking Injustice.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Express 28 Sept. 2007, first ed., Features sec.: 53. Carvel, Bertie. “20 Questions … with Bertie Carvel.” What’s On Stage. 15 Oct. 2007. 25 Oct. 2007 . Clapp, Susannah. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Observer 30 Sept. 2007, Arts sec.: 21. Darvell, Michael. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Classical Source 26 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 .

De Jongh, Nicholas. “Love the Musicals, but Save the Drama: Straight plays are being edged out of the West End.” The Evening Standard 20 Oct. 2006: A13. ---. “A Musical that Dares to be Serious.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Evening Standard 25 Sept. 2007. Evening Standard Lite. 8 Oct. 2007 . Dickos, Andrews. Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir. Lexington: The University Press of Kentrucky, 2002. Dinnerstein, Leonard. “Atlanta in the Progressive Era: A Dreyfus Affair in Georgia.” Jews in the South. Ed. Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. 170-197. ---. The Leo Frank Case. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Dorris, George. Rev. of Parade. Show Music 15 (1999): 18-19. Eisner, Lotte H. Fritz Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Everett, William A. The Musical: A Research and Information Guide. New York: Routledge, 2004. Feingold, Michael. “Rites of Man.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Village Voice 29 Dec. 1998: 137. Finkle, David. “Hey Kids, the Musical Ain’t Quite Dead Yet.” Village Voice 11 Jan. 2000: 64. Foner, Philip S. “Black-Jewish Relations in the Opening Years of the Twentieth Century.”Phylon 36 (1975): 359-367. Golden, Harry. A Little Girl Is Dead. New York: Avon Books, 1965. Goldstein, Eric L. “‘Now is the Time to Show Your True Colors’: Southern Jews, Whiteness, and the Rise of Jim Crow.” Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History. Ed. Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. 134-55. Grant, Mark N. The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical. Boston: Northeastern UniversityPress, 2004. Grode, Eric. “Parade Marches On.” Show Music 16.2 (Summer 2000): 37. Guettel, Adam. “In Praise of Melody, and Rodgers.” The New York Times. 9 Sept. 2001, late ed.: 9. Hart, Christopher. “Rather a Trying Experience.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Sunday Times 30 Sept. 2007, Culture sec.: 21. Hirsch, Foster. Harold Prince and the American Musical. New York: Applause, 2005. Hodges, Paul. “Brown Out.” The Orange County Register 4 Jan. 2004. The Official Website of Jason Robert Brown. 8 Jan. 2008 . Horowitz, Simi. “After the ‘Ballyhoo’ – Comes the ‘Parade.’” Back Stage 39 (1998): 51-2.

Isenberg, Barbara. “Lynching, the Musical?” The Los Angeles Times 13 Dec.1998, 3+. Isherwood, Charles. Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Variety 18 Dec. 1998. 31 Oct. 2006 . Jenkins, Stephen, ed. Fritz Lang: The Image & the Look. London: BFI, 1981. Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2003. Kalb, Jonathan. “The Death (and Life) of American Theater Criticism: Advice to the Young Critic.” Theater 33.1 (Winter 2003): 44-57. Kerr, Walter. “Company: Original and Uncompromising.” Rev. of Company, by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. The Sunday Times 3 May 1970. Rpt. in New York Critics’ Reviews 31 (1970): 263. Knapp, Raymond. The American Musical and the Performance of National Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Kuchwara, Michael. “Musical Parade Gets It Right.” Rev. of Parade. Associated Press 17 Dec. 1998. The Official Website of Jason Robert Brown. 31 Oct. 2007 . Lahr, John. “Ancient and Modern: The fresh drama of Electra, a new musical, and a glimpse of Kidman.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. The New Yorker 28 Dec. and 4 Jan. 1999: 135-7. Lang, Eleanor. “RE: Contact Form.” E-mail to author regarding selection of the Donmar’s season and artists. 8 Oct. 2007. Letts, Quentin. “Fight for Truth That’s Worth Singing About.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Daily Mail 28 Sept. 2007, first ed.: 63. Levy, Eugene. “’Is the Jew a White Man?’: Press Reaction to the Leo Frank Case, 1913-1915.” Phylon 35 (1974): 212-222. Lincoln Center Theater. 5 Oct. 2007 . Lyons, Donald. “Carver, Carmello Lead a Wrenching Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. New York Post 18 Dec. 1998: 58. MacLean, Nancy. “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in theMaking of Reactionary Populism.” The Journal of American History 78 (1991): 917- 948. Mandelbaum, Ken. “On Stage.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Show Music 15 (Spring 1999): 15+. ---. “Pretty Music.” Rev. of Parade. Original Broadway Cast Recording. RCA Victor, 1999. In Theater 10 May 1999: 35. ---. Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. In Theater 11 Jan. 1998: 18-19.Martland, Lisa. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Stage 25 Sept. 2007. 8 Oct. 2007 .

Martin, Ralph G. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971. McGinn, Caroline. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. Time Out 1 Oct. 2007. 21 Oct. 2007 . McMullan, James. Interview with Thomas Cott. “A Conversation with Thomas Cott.” 16 Dec. 1998. Lincoln Center Theater Platform Series. 20 Jan. 2008 . Melnick, Jeffrey. Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South. Jackson, M.S.: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Nightingale, Benedict. “Small-stage Setting Brings Intensity to Sombre Lament from the Deep South.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The London Times 26 Sept. 2007, Home News: 28. ---. “A Dance to the Music of Ragtime.” Rev. of Ragtime. Picadilly Theatre, London. The London Times 20 Mar. 2003, Features: 19. ---. “Virtue Rains on this Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. The London Times 29 Dec. 1998, Features. Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Random House, 2003. O’Toole, Fintan. “A Parade of Humanity.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Daily News 18 Dec. 1998: 75. Ott, Frederick W. The Films of Fritz Lang. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1979. Pacheco, Patrick. “News from the Road: Is There a Parade in Town?” Playbill 19 (2000): 40. Parade. By Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry. Co-conceived by Harold Prince. Dir. Kate Ingram. The University of Central Florida, Orlando. 6 Apr. 2008. Parade. By Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry. Co-conceived by Harold Prince. Dir. Rob Ashford. Perf. Bertie Carvel and Lara Pulver. Donmar Warehouse, London, England. 27 & 29 (2:30 & 7:30pm) Sept. 2007. Parade. By Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry. Co-conceived and directed by Harold Prince. Perf. Carolee Carmello and Brent Carver. Vivian Beaumont Theater, New York, New York. TOFT, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, 20 Jan. 1999. Prince, Harold. Interview with Thomas Cott. “A Conversation with Hal Prince.” Lincoln Center Theater, New York. 9 Dec. 1998. 1 Mar. 2008 . Peck, Abraham J. Peck. “’Peculiar Institution’: Jews and Judaism in the Nineteenth CenturySouth.” Modern Judaism 7 (1987): 94-114. Rich, Alan. The Lincoln Center Story. New York: American Heritage, 1984.

Roberts, Adam. An Analysis of Musical Narrative and Signification In Jason Robert Brown’s Score For Parade. Thesis. The Florida State University, 2005. Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI, 2006. AAT 1429059. Rosenberg, David A. “Passionate Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Original Broadway Cast Recording. RCA Victor, 1999. Back Stage 4 Jun. 1999: 43. Samuels, Charles and Louise. Night Fell on Georgia. New York: Dell, 1956. Savran, David. “Toward a Historiography of the Popular.” Theatre Survey 45.2 (Nov. 2004): 211-17. Shepherd, John and Peter Wicke. Music and Cultural Theory. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1997. Sheward, David. Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Back Stage 1 Jan. 1999: 30. Simon, John. “Trial and Eros.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. New York 4 Jan. 1999: 68- 9. Singer, Barry. Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2004. Spencer, Charles. “A Disturbingly Topical Original.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Daily Telegraph 25 Sept. 2007: 26. Stamas, Stephan and Sharon Zane. Lincoln Center: A Promise Realized, 1979-2006. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007. Stearns, David Patrick. “Parade Pointedly in Step with Today.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. USA Today 18 Dec. 1998, final ed.: 4E. ---. “Voices of the Future Young Theater Composers Shine.” USA Today 20 Nov. 1998, final ed.: 7E. Stefanova-Peteva, Kalina ed. Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages? Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993. ---. Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages? Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. Stourac, Richard and Kathleen McCreery. Theatre as a Weapon: Workers’ Theatre in the Soviet Union, Germany and Britain, 1917-1934. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. Taylor, Paul. “Daring and Ambitious Musical Vindicated.” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Independent 25 Sept. 2007, first ed., News: 12. Tripney, Natasha. Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. musicOMH.com. 8 Oct. 2007 . Wagner, Vit. “Carver Leads the Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Toronto Star 18 Dec. 1998, metro ed.: D18. Walker, Tim. “On a Serious Note…” Rev. of Parade. Donmar Warehouse. The Sunday Telegraph 30 Sept. 2007, sec. 7: 32. ---. Rev. of Wicked. Rpt. on Wicked the Musical. 1 Mar. 2008 .

Webb, Clive. Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2001. ---. “A Tangled Web: Black-Jewish Relations in the Twentieth-Century South.” Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History. Ed. Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. 192-209. Whitehead, Sam. Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Time Out NY 13 Dec. 1998. The Official Website of Jason Robert Brown. 31 Oct. 2007 . Whittaker, Donald Elgan, III. Subversive Aspects of American Musical Theatre. Diss. Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College, 2002. Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2002. AAT 3049241. Winer-Bernheimer, Linda. “Cumulative Mastery Is Grand Marshal of Parade.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Newsday 25 Dec. 1998, sunrise ed.: E05. Wolf, Matt. Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom. New York: Proscenium Publishers, Inc., 2002. Wolf, Stacy. “In Defense of Pleasure: Musical Theatre History in the Liberal Arts [A Manifesto].” Theater Topics 17.1 (Mar. 2007): 51-60. Zoglin, Richard. “The Case Against Leo: An Infamous Lynching Becomes a Somber Musical.” Rev. of Parade. Vivian Beaumont. Time 28 Dec. 1998. 29 Oct. 2006 .

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Originally from Detroit, Julie Haverkate received her B.A. in English Language & Literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Prior to pursuing her M.A. in Theatre Studies at Florida State University, she spent a semester abroad studying English and Drama at Queen Mary – The University of London, and worked at both Meadow Brook Theatre in Rochester, MI as an administrative and creative intern, as well as at Walt Disney World as a performer. She has since worked in the literary department of the Summer Play Festival in New York City and has also dramaturged numerous shows for both SPF and FSU. While maintaining varied tastes, Julie is most interested in continuing her pursuit in the study of American musical theatre, as well as a career in popular criticism and literary management.