Michael Arden’s brilliant Tony-winning direction revitalizes Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Parade, topping the reasons why Broadway’s 2013 Tony winner for Best Revival of a Musical is an absolute must-see at the Ahmanson.

Not that this tale of justice gone horrifically wrong is an easy watch, as anyone who’s experienced its devastating final minutes can tell you.

 But rarely has a Broadway musical packed a more powerful punch than Parade, few have featured a more gorgeously eclectic score than Brown’s, and you won’t find a more stirring love story in musical theater than the one that sends a young wife on a mission to save her falsely accused and convicted husband from the hangman’s noose.

 The story composer-lyricist Brown and book writer Alfred Uhry have to tell is sadly no figment of their imagination, and one of director Arden’s most inspired concepts is to back his thrillingly stylized staging with historical photographs of those involved in this miscarriage of justice and of the newspaper headlines they generated.

The year is 1913 and Jewish Northerner Leo Frank (Max Chernin) has spent the previous four regretting his decision to accept a job managing a pencil factory in his wife Lucille’s (Talia Suskauer) hometown of Marietta, Georgia, where he has stuck out like a sore thumb from the moment of his arrival, even among the city’s Jewish minority. (“I thought that Jews were Jews but I was wrong.”)

Then comes the fateful day that teenage Mary Phagan is found murdered in Leo’s factory, and the outsider becomes the prime suspect, if only because he represents “the other” even more than does the black night watchman who is the only other suspect.

 And given that the evidence against Leo is primarily circumstantial, local prosecutor Hugh Dorsey has little or no qualms about coercing Newt, Mary’s fellow factory girls, and even the Franks’ housekeeper to lie on the witness stand, thereby making the jury’s guilty verdict a foregone conclusion.

Still, as powerful as Act One has been, it’s after intermission that Parade achieves its greatest impact as Lucille, initially unwilling even to remain in town for her husband’s trial, let alone attend it, now becomes Leo’s fiercest advocate, and Leo and Lucille’s love story becomes one for the ages.

I’ve seen well over a half-dozen productions of Parade, and as great as at least several of them have been, none has reached the heights director Arden’s achieves.

By keeping the production’s two-dozen or so supporting players seated onstage throughout most of the show’s two-and-a-half-hour running time, Arden reminds us that in a town as insular as Marietta, Leo is never far from the public eye.

This “seating plan” yields bonus results, too, as when the men don Confederate uniforms in a Civil War flashback, or when most of the ensemble stands to join in Marietta’s Confederate Memorial Day celebration as the African Americans among them remain deliberately seated as if in silent protest.

And these are just a few examples of how Arden reinvents a musical without feeling the need to “deconstruct” it to often divisive effect.

And just wait till you experience the performances the director has elicited from his crème-de-la-crème touring cast.

Inheriting roles that scored Ben Platt and Michaela Diamond Tony nominations, Chernin and Suskauer take Leo and Lucille on journeys of growth rarely seen in a Broadway musical, he from prickly, remote outsider to passionate, committed lover of both his wife and life itself, she from frightened mouse to her husband’s fiercest advocate, and if you don’t feel like breaking into sobs when Chernin and Suskauer duet “All The Wasted Time,” you had better see a heart doctor.

Book writer Uhry fills the Parade canvas with one showcase featured role after another, and Griffin Binnicker, Alison Ewing, Olivia Goosman, Danielle Lee Greaves, Evan Harrington, Jenny Hickman, Robert Knight, Prentiss E. Mouton, Ramone Nelson, Oluchi Nwaokorie, Jack Roden, Andrew Samonsky, Chris Shyer, and Michael Tacconi deliver the dramatic-vocal goods to stunning effect, each and every one of them.

And the same can be said for ensemble members Ben Cherington, Emily Rose DeMartino, Bailee Endebrock, Caroline Fairweather, Trevor James, Sophia Manicone, Trista Moldovan, Ethan Riordan, Jason Simon, and Brian Vaughn.

Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant’s eclectic choreography is showcased in such musical numbers as the mob violence menace-packed “Where Will You Stand When the Flood Comes?” the creepy yet infectious “That’s What He Said,” and the jaunty two-step rhythms of “Pretty Music.”

The production’s touring orchestra may feature only about half the number of musicians of the 2023 Broadway revival, but to this reviewer’s ears they sounded pretty darned magnificent under music director Charlie Alterman’s baton and mixed with amped vocals by sound designer Jon Weston.

Last but not least, it is impossible to underestimate the design contributions of Dane Laffrey (scenic), Susan Hilferty and Mark Koss (costumes), Heather Gilbert (lighting), Sven Ortel (projections), and Tom Watson (hair and wigs), whose combined talents give the Parade a textured, strikingly original look that belies the production’s New York City Center “gala concert” origins.

Casting is by The Telsey Office, Craig Burns, CSA. William Bishop, Jerquintez A. Gipson, Brianna Javis, Benjamin Magnuson, Jodi Snyder, Eden Witvoet, and Jake Ziman are swings.

Emilio Ramos is associate director. Veronica Aglow is production stage manager. Stacy Myers is company manager.

 If all you are looking for in a musical is escapist entertainment, then Parade probably isn’t the show for you.

If, on the other hand, you want to be as deeply moved as you’ve ever been by a Broadway musical, then do not miss the chance to see what miracles Michael Arden has wrought in a Parade that will rip your heart to shreds and bring you to your feet.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
June 18, 2025
Photos: Joan Marcus

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Alfred Uhry, Center Theatre Group, Jason Robert Brown, Los Angeles Theater Review