Reviewed by:

• Parade by Alfred Uhry
• I. B. Hopkins

Time moves peculiarly in Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s sobering Parade, which was revived on Broadway in 2023 for the first time since its debut fizzled out after only eighty-five regular performances in 1998–99. Every day seems to be Confederate Memorial Day in Atlanta, as the sensationalized story of Leo Frank unfolds over several years and the audience’s sense of what precisely is being commemorated thickens. The major drama-turgical challenge of its ripped-from-the-headlines plot remains the fact that many theatregoers will already know the outcome: an antisemitic mob brutally lynched Leo Frank in 1915. The success of City Center’s revival is owed in part to the celebrity status of lead Ben Platt, who along with co-star Micaela Diamond gave a commanding vocal performance. More fundamentally, however, director Michael Arden’s meticulous attention to thematic cyclicality and innovative commitment to treating the musical as a ritual service of remembrance account for the widespread acclaim it enjoyed.

Uhry grew up in the Atlanta Jewish community, where, as the playwright describes, Leo Frank’s name remained verboten decades after the tragedy. The victim was accused, convicted, and later exonerated of the rape and murder of Mary Phagan, a 14-year-old white girl who worked in the factory he [End Page 108] oversaw. According to Uhry, it was precisely the untellable quality of the story that drew his fascination and ultimately served as the seed for the musical. Indeed, his narrative bears out this emphasis as it highlights systems of oppression—populist yellow journalism, the court’s racist and coercive use of chain gangs, absolutist political bosses, and the sacralization of white womanhood—rather than excoriating individual villains. Actual historical figu es do populate the stage, but apart from Leo (Platt) and his wife Lucille (Diamond), Uhry’s storytelling subordinates their personal heroism or culpability to the conditions that made possible the murder of an innocent man.

“The Old Red Hills of Home,” featuring the company of Parade. (Photo: Joan Marcus.)

Playing out on Dane Laff ey’s uncrowded set, Arden’s stripped-down staging embraced this structural critique. As the cast gathered along the perimeter of a bare platform, they took a breath in view of the audience before beginning the Prologue (“The Old Red Hills of Home”). This gesture to the artists’ labor in rehearsing such a grim spectacle preceded the charged opening scene in which a young Confederate soldier writes home to his sweetheart, vowing to defend her. Two verses later, he has aged into a battered old veteran still sermonizing on the Lost Cause as the ensemble joins in for an exuberant Memorial Day anthem. Brown’s stirring lyrics and swollen harmonies encouraged the audience to sympathize—before children waving Confederate battle flags shocked the senses. This production brought the paradegoers down onto the apron, exhorting the audience to relate emotionally, and thereby drew a direct line between the theatrically appealing aesthetics of patriotism and the patriarchal violence at its root. (The scene recalled original director and “co-conceiver” Harold Prince’s earlier work, especially the discomfiting “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in Cabaret.)

Sven Ortel’s projection design primed the audience for this first encounter with the allure of patriarchal morality and met it with contrast throughout the production. Prior to the musical’s beginning, a photograph projected on the exposed brick back wall of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre panned eerily and gradually zoomed in on a meager historical marker in a parking lot. Later, a projected backdrop of newspapers, photographs, and other records that wallpapered the set served as an archive, attesting to an implied claim to historicity. This framing suggested that some people likely already knew the story; the value of its retelling, however, derived from the communal act of revisitation and reflection City Center pivoted from Uhry’s expository history, which seemed meant to startle the audience with the...

 审阅者：

• 
  阿尔弗雷德·乌里的游行
•  I·B·霍普金斯

阿尔弗雷德·乌里 (Alfred Uhry) 和杰森·罗伯特·布朗 (Jason Robert Brown) 的发人深省的《游行》(Parade) 的时间流逝得特别，该剧自 1998-99 年首演仅 85 场后便以失败告终，于 2023 年首次在百老汇上演。亚特兰大的每一天似乎都是邦联阵亡将士纪念日，随着利奥·弗兰克的耸人听闻的故事在几年内展开，观众对到底要纪念什么的感觉也越来越强烈。其从头条新闻中摘取的情节的主要戏剧性挑战仍然是这样一个事实，即许多观众已经知道结果：一群反犹太暴徒在 1915 年残酷地私刑处决了利奥·弗兰克。市中心复兴的成功部分归功于主演本·普拉特 (Ben Platt) 享有名人地位，他与搭档米凯拉·戴蒙德 (Micaela Diamond) 一起进行了令人惊叹的声乐表演。然而，更根本的是，导演迈克尔·雅顿对主题周期性的一丝不苟的关注以及将这部音乐剧视为一种纪念仪式的创新承诺，使其获得了广泛的赞誉。

乌里在亚特兰大犹太社区长大，正如剧作家所描述的那样，悲剧发生几十年后，利奥·弗兰克的名字仍然被禁止使用。受害人因强奸和谋杀玛丽·帕根 (Mary Phagan) 而被指控、定罪，后来被证明无罪。玛丽·帕根是一名 14 岁白人女孩，在他管理的工厂工作[完第 108 页]。尤里表示，正是这个故事的难以言喻的品质吸引了他的着迷，并最终成为这部音乐剧的种子。事实上，他的叙述证实了这一重点，因为它强调了压迫制度——民粹主义的黄色新闻、法院对铁链帮派的种族主义和强制使用、专制政治老板以及白人女性的神圣化——而不是谴责个别恶棍。舞台上确实出现了真实的历史人物，但除了利奥（普拉特饰）和他的妻子露西尔（戴蒙德饰）之外，乌里的故事讲述将他们的个人英雄主义或罪责置于可能谋杀无辜者的条件之下。

“故乡的老红山”，由 Parade 公司主创。 （照片：琼·马库斯。）

在戴恩·拉菲 (Dane Laffey) 不拥挤的演出中，雅顿简洁的舞台表演接受了这种结构性的批评。当演员们聚集在一个光秃秃的平台周围时，他们在开始序幕（“家乡的老红山”）之前在观众的视野中吸了一口气。在紧张的开场场景之前，艺术家们在排练如此残酷的场面时付出了巨大的努力，在开场场景中，一名年轻的南部邦联士兵写信给他的心上人，发誓要保卫她。两节经文之后，他已经变成了一位饱受摧残的老兵，仍在为“失败的事业”布道，而乐团则加入了一首热情洋溢的阵亡将士纪念日颂歌。布朗激动人心的歌词和夸张的和声激发了观众的同情心——随后挥舞着南部邦联战旗的孩子们震惊了感官。这部作品将游行者带到了停机坪上，劝告观众进行情感共鸣，从而在爱国主义的戏剧吸引力美学和其根源上的父权暴力之间划清了界限。 （这个场景让人想起原导演和“共同构思者”哈罗德·普林斯的早期作品，尤其是歌舞表演中令人不安的“明天属于我”。）

斯文·奥特尔的投影设计让观众第一次感受到父权道德的诱惑，并在整个制作过程中形成对比。在音乐剧开始之前，伯纳德·B·雅各布斯剧院裸露的砖块后墙上投影的一张照片诡异地摇动，并逐渐放大到停车场中一个微不足道的历史标记上。后来，报纸、照片和其他记录的投影背景作为档案，证明了对历史性的隐含主张。这个框架表明有些人可能已经知道这个故事了。然而，其重述的价值来自于重新审视和反思市中心的公共行为，该行为以乌里的说明性历史为中心，这似乎是为了让观众感到震惊……