THE ARTS/THEATER
DECEMBER 28, 1998-JANUARY 4, 1999 VOL. 152 NO. 26
SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE/MAN OF THE YEAR
The Case Against Leo
An infamous lynching becomes a somber musical
By RICHARD ZOGLIN
In April 1913 the body of Mary Phagan, 13, strangled to death,
was found in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she
worked. Leo Frank, the factory's manager, was arrested for the
crime and, despite his protestations of innocence, convicted of
murder and sentenced to death. Two years later, after his
sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment by the Governor
of Georgia, Frank was taken from his prison cell by persons
unknown and lynched. Because Frank was Jewish, his case became a
nationwide cause celebre for Jewish groups and political figures
crusading against anti-Semitism.
Not the usual material for a Broadway musical--but don't scoff.
Director Harold Prince has taken other unlikely subjects, from
Sweeney Todd to Evita Peron, and made them sing onstage. And book
author Alfred Uhry (whose great-uncle was Leo Frank's boss) has
been able to turn the crosscurrents of race and religion in the
South into mass entertainment before (Driving Miss Daisy, The
Last Night of Ballyhoo). Indeed, Parade, which just opened at
Lincoln Center, is the kind of ambitious musical that can
sometimes soar to greatness. It certainly takes a healthy bite
out of a juicy story. It relates the case to the South's effort
to heal the schisms of the Civil War (in an opening flashback, a
Confederate soldier sings of home); portrays the tensions between
Frank, a transplanted New Yorker, and his more assimilated
Southern-Jewish wife Lucille; and sketches everything from the
sensationalistic press coverage to the complex social pressures
on the case, in which Frank's chief accuser (and, it now appears,
the probable murderer) was a black man.
But for all its intelligence, Parade is a somber show that falls
uncomfortably between the stools of history and art. The facts
are treated respectfully enough to make the digressions into
cliche annoying. To bolster Frank's status as a victim, for
example, his lawyer is portrayed as a clueless Southern blowhard
whose legal strategy consists mainly of keeping Frank from
testifying and having him make an impromptu statement to the jury
instead. In reality, according to Steve Oney, author of a history
of the case to be published next year, Frank was represented by
two of the most respected members of Atlanta's legal elite, and
their defense rested largely on the assumption that a Southern
jury would never convict a white man on the basis of a black
man's testimony.
The talented Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello do their level
best to bring Leo and Lucille to life, but, as written, their
characters are fatally uninteresting. The music and lyrics, by
Jason Robert Brown, catch fire only in a couple of disposable
up-tempo numbers (Mary Phagan getting wooed by a suitor on the
trolley) and turn gooey in big ballads like All the Wasted Time,
sung by Lucille and Leo in jail. Prince's staging is elegant but
rather quiet, the set dominated by a giant oak tree from which
Leo will eventually hang. No one wants a glitzed-up tragedy, but
when a show called Parade has three of them, and each takes place
at the back of the stage mostly hidden by the onlooking crowd,
you can't even go home humming the sets. END