Parade (5*)

As much as I was enjoying Parade, a gefilte fish-out-of-water musical about a Brooklyn Jew who was lynched by anti-Semites in Georgia just half a century after the Confederacy lost the Civil War, the end of the first act left me with a nagging fear:  during the Jim Crow era, African Americans regularly experienced the terror that befell Leo Frank and his wife Lucille (visit Montgomery's National Memorial for Peace and Justice to see how pervasive hanging innocent men was for such a long time).  What made the Frank incident deserving of such creative focus, especially as the book was written by Alfred Uhry, the man who won an Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy, a movie many people now find more than a little cringeworthy.

Fortunately, the second act opens with a black man and woman directly addressing the issue in "A Rumblin' and a Rollin,'" an ironic number which posits the hope that Yankees will finally recognize how little has changed in the Deep South.  Parade still centers whiteness but it's pretty hard to deny the parallels between anti-Semitism and racism, particularly when the former has grown increasingly worse in the 25 years since the musical was first performed on Broadway.

Uhry leavens the grim story by exploring how the incident strengthens Leo's love and respect for Lucille.  Whether or not her interventions on his behalf are historical or not, the musical needs them for dramatic and emotional purposes, to say nothing of the soaring duets Leo's newfound respect for his wife provide Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond who inhabit their roles with aching verisimilitude.  I challenge you not to weep during "Sh'ma," a wrenchingly sung Jewish prayer.

Like Caroline, or Change, Parade was ahead of its time when it first opened.  But its revival has one decided advantage over the revival of Tony Kushner's bittersweet musical:  original staging by a theatrical master.  From the central conceit of the hanging platform to the dramatizing of the investigations that led to both Frank's conviction and pardon, Harold Prince delivers an ugly American history lesson with a profoundly affecting shiver.