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The lynching of Leo Frank: An occasion for a 'Parade'
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Lara Pulver and T.R. Knight in "Parade" at the Mark Taper Forum.
The musical "Parade" now at the Mark Taper Forum is about the past and the present, how people can celebrate the misery of others based on race, religion or education. This play asks us to comtemplate the death of Leo Frank, a northerner in the South soon after the Civil War and a Jew. Led by T.R. Knight, the ill-fated George of the popular "Grey's Anatomy," this cast takes us on a frightful journey. Imagine being a former slave and thinking that freedom was just another kind of terror. Imagine thinking that justice could be found in a place that still celebrated the enslavement of people. Imagine Atlanta after the Civil War.
In the Donmar Warehouse production of "Parade" (book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown), the stereotype of musicals being cheery fantasies of every day life is subverted. As with "Cabaret," this musical takes on real issues: the case of a Jewish American man found guilty under suspicious circumstances and kidnapped from prison to be hung. "Cabaret" also looked at the situation of a Jewish population under the rise of the Nazis and questions the complicity of the population, ordinary people and questions of conscience.
In this production of "Parade," the antebellum days of the South still haunt Georgia. In the prologue, a woman in a blue dress with a full hoop skirt is bidding a young solider farewell (Curt Hansen).
YOUNG SOLDIER:
Farewell, my Lila
I'll write every evening
I've carved our names
In the trunk of this tree
Farewell, my Lila
I miss you already
And dream of the day
When I'll hold you again
In a home safe from fear
When the Southland is free
I go to fight for these old hills behind me
These Old Red Hills of Home
I go to fight, for these old hills remind me
Of a way of life that's pure
Of the truth that must endure
In a town called Marietta
In the Old Red Hills of Home
He returns (Davis Gaines), older and crippled.
OLD SOLDIER:
Look there, My Lila
They call me to tell it
The lives that we led
When the Southland was free
We gave our lives for the old hills of Georgia
The Old Red Hills of Home
Not much survives of the old hills of Georgia
But I close my eyes and hear
All the treasures we held dear
The rushing of the Chattahoochie
The rustling in the wind
And Mama in the kitchen singin'
And me and Lila swinging in a tree
The main action begins on Confederate Memorial Day (26 April) in 1913, a day apparently still observed in Georgia and a few other states to honor those who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Leo Frank (Knight), originally from Texas, but raised in Brooklyn, tell his wife, Lucille (Lara Pulber), he's amazed Georgians would celebrate a war they lost and instead of taking the day off, he goes to work. Frank is cold and not at ease in the South or with his wife who, although Jewish, seems more Gentile than Jew.
LEO:
A Yankee with a college education
Who by his own design
Is trapped inside the land
That time forgot
ENSEMBLE:
Strong and proud
LEO:
I'm trapped inside this life
And trapped beside a wife
Who would prefer that I said "Howdy" not "Shalom"
Well I'm sorry Lucille
But I feel what I feel
And this place is surreal
So How can I call this home!
Frank has taken a job as a pencil factory superintendent at the National Pencil Factory. His uncle owns a large share of the company and was a Confederate veteran.
On that day, 13-year-old girl called Mary Phagan (Roe Sezniak) goes to the factory to claim her wages ($1.20), flirting with a young man, Frankie Epps (Hansen). Phagan is soon dead: raped and strangled. The factory watchman, an African American named Newt Lee (David St. Louis), reports finding her body early the next morning.
What happens next is driven by prejudice. Newt Lee is black and afraid. African American Jim Conley (also played by St. Louis) points the finger at Frank. Frank is not only Jewish, he's highly educated (graduating from Cornell with a degree in engineering) and he's from the South.
Before long, newspapers are using this sensational trial to boost their circulation and a reporter (P.J. Griffith), to help his career, but he wouldn't be the only opportunist. Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (christian Hoff) uses this trial to help him win the governor's office. Frank is found guilty and sentence to death and that's enough cause for celebration: a lynching party.
Yet Frank would appeal and his wife would be persistent, bringing Frank to realize he had underestimated his wife and their relationship grows warmer. The Supreme Court would deny an appeal, but the governor, John M. Slaton (Michael Berresse) would grant clemency--commuting his sentence to life in prison. He assumed as did Lucille, that Frank would eventually be found not guilty and be set free. Instead, Frank is taken by the Knights of Mary Phagan and hanged.
His lynching is polite. What do I mean by polite? He requests that he be given something to cover himself with since he's wearing nothing but a nightshirt. He asks to write a note to his wife and to have his wedding ring returned to her. In this respect, the Knights on that August night treated him with respect.
According to one Web site, blacks accounted for 72.7 percent of the people who were lynched. Georgia has the second highest number of lynchings between 1882 and 1968 (Mississippi had the highest). There were even states that did not lynch people such as Massachusetts and Connecticut. Some states lynched no blacks according to the state records. Some lynched more white people than blacks (such as California).
According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia, Tennessee ranked sixth, behind Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. The treatment of African American victims were different. The black people were tortured prior to hanging, including eye-gouging; cutting off ears, nose, fingers and toes for souvenirs and the use of wire pliers to take out teeth. Black men were castrated or had their sex organs mutilated. Black women were raped. This did not happen to white men or women who were lynched.
The different is notable. In the musical, the black servants, Riley and Angela (St. Louis and Deidrie Henry) sing about how much fuss is being made about the trial of a white man ("A Rumblin' and a Rollin'") when no one would make such a fuss for a black person.
ANGELA
Mister Frank, good for you.
Lotta folks comin' to get you through.
Mister Frank, ain't that grand?
Lotta folks comin' to take a stand.
Mister Frank, knock on wood.
It ain't gonna do you no g**damn good!
CONLEY
I can tell you this, as a matter of fact,
That the local hotels wouldn't be so packed
If a little black girl had gotten attacked.
NEWT LEE, RILEY AND ANGELA
Go on, go on, go on, go on:
RILEY
They're comin', they're comin' now, yessirree!
NEWT LEE
'Cause a white man gonna get hung, you see.
CONLEY, RILEY AND NEWT LEE
There's a black man swingin' in ev'ry tree
ALL FOUR
But they don't never pay attention!
ANGELA
Oh, no:
CONLEY
Hell:
ALL FOUR
They never say, "Why? Why? Why?"
RILEY
But if a Yankee boy flies:
CONLEY
Surprise!
ANGELA AND CONLEY
Surprise!
NEWT LEE
Surprise!
ALL FOUR
They gonna pay attention!
They gonna yell "Set that man free!"
Leo Frank's lynching resulted in a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the departure of many American Jews from Georgia and the founding of the Anti-Defamation League, but playwright Uhry doesn't want you to be bogged down with that information. That would detract from the love story--between Lucille and Leo and Georgia with its antebellum past. We don't see the participants taking photos with his body, nor taking pieces of his clothing for souvenirs. We don't learn that in 1982, a man came forward to testify against Conley. Frank was given a posthumous pardon in 1986, after the witness had died. Still some of Phagan's family insist that Frank was guilty. We don't get wrapped up in the good that came of this because a man did die and it would, unfortunately, be many more years before attention was paid to the lynching of non-whites in Georgia.
This play won a Tony Award for Best Score and Best Book of a Musical in 1999. Uhry also wrote the 1987 play "Driving Miss Daisy" and adapted it into screenplay for the 1989 film of the same name with Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also wrote the 1996 "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" which won a Tony Award for Best Play.
If you're looking for a lighthearted musical, "Parade" isn't for you, but if you want something cerebral served with your entertainment, this thoughtful production of "Parade" is well acted, and directed with enough gravity without being dull or thuddingly overwrought by Rob Ashford (who also choreographed). Ashford presents none of these people as villains and let's us ponder the legacy of the South and racism in our own time.
"Parade" continues until 15 November at the New Mark Taper Forum. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 p.m.; Sundays1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
For more information go to the Mark Taper Forum web site.
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