“Parade” opens with a drumbeat for soldiers to march to and hearts to keep rhythm with. It is the American Civil War’s lethal metronome, keeping time that has been lost in carnage. For now, the year is 1863, and the place is Marietta, Ga. A young man kisses his love goodbye to head into battle, answering that rat-a-tat call to self-sacrifice. A Confederate flag is raised proudly, its stars and stripes beaming under the stage lights. The parade has begun.
The story that “Parade” presents with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown is a true one. The Broadway musical is a dramatization of the infamous 1913 trial of Leo Frank. “Parade” is currently on its 2025 national tour, and its most recent stop was Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre. Its next stop is the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Ga. The audience bears witness to a historical re-enactment of the events that damned Frank’s life and serves as a secondary, passive jury. The stage is dominated by a menagerie of chairs and benches, all of which face a large wooden platform in the center. There is an acute awareness of the line drawn between player and spectator.
The American Civil War ends after the prologue of “Parade,” but its impact is ever-present in the story. Georgia is a wounded soldier and proud of its past. Flags fly accordingly, raised on and around the platform. It is April 26, 1913: Confederate Memorial Day. The mood is joyous, and tragedy is poised to strike.
Leo Frank (Max Chernin) and his wife Lucille (Talia Suskauer) are a rarity for early twentieth century Georgia: Jewish in a vast sea of Christianity. Leo hails from Brooklyn, N.Y., which makes him even more of an outsider. He views Lucille’s existence as “Jewish and Southern” to be a contradiction. But as a newly-minted Southerner, he must deal with these incongruities firsthand. Chernin plays Leo as kind but rather stiff, in contrast with Suskauer’s warm and sugar-sweet portrayal of Lucille. Chernin and Suskauer’s dynamic is amusing, and their chemistry as a couple is believable.
The brutal murder of 13-year-old National Pencil Company factory worker Mary Phagan (Olivia Goosman) is made more disturbing by the shrill, innocent insistence Goosman plays her with. The discovery of Mary’s mangled body is not shown, but the description is enough. When the harsh beam of a flashlight is pointed into the audience, the murder feels close. It is a reminder that this horror stretches beyond the stage, that fiction is not here to hold our hand.
Because Leo works as a superintendent at the factory Mary was murdered in, the antisemitic community jumps to pin the crime on him. The local newspaper works itself into a frenzy that escalates into something bordering on burlesque. “Real Big News” is a standout number that takes the frenzy into full swing, led by reporter Britt Craig (Michael Tacconi). Newspapers are raised in the same fashion as Confederate flags. There is an ecstasy in Craig that borders on the religious, and the people of Georgia are eager to dance on Leo’s grave.
The trial of Leo is the most electric sequence in the show, where the innate theatricality of the courtroom is exploited to the maximum. In the song, “The Factory Girls / Come Up to My Office,” false testimonies twist Leo into a puppet of sorts. Leo becomes a caricature of himself, and it is jarring when juxtaposed with Chernin’s portrayal of the man. Charismatic Tom Watson (Griffin Binnicker) and snakish Hugh Dorsey (Andrew Samonsky) are two sides of the same coin that damns Leo. Leo is trapped in every way, so his murder conviction comes as no surprise. The innocent man is scheduled to hang.
The second act of “Parade” is an emotional rollercoaster, shifting violently between hope and despair. The song “Pretty Music,” sung by Governor Slaton (Chris Shyer), offers the audience an uneasy ballroom respite from Leo’s prison woes. But we are soon thrust back into the misery like we never left.
The passion between Lucille and Leo is particularly moving to watch. Two years have passed since Leo’s incarceration, and the obstacle prison poses has made the love between him and Lucille more poignant. The duets “This Is Not Over Yet” and “All the Wasted Time” are achingly beautiful; the latter serves as Leo’s swan song.
The end of Leo Frank’s story is chilling. His second lease on life is stripped from him by a radical mob that takes him out to the country in order to take justice into their own hands. With a noose around his neck, Leo recites his final prayers. After Chernin jumps from the platform to simulate the lynching, the theater is pitch-black and dead silent. Any remaining pretenses of fiction in “Parade” have been cast off for good. History is reality.
Though the tragedy that is “Parade” unfolded over a century ago and the dramatization was first performed in 1998, the story is unnervingly topical. The racism and antisemitism of “Parade’s” Southern community eerily parallels contemporary America. Blind faith will always go hand in hand with blind hatred.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Boston as the first stop on the national tour of “Parade.” The Daily regrets this error.
