Broadway’s ‘Parade’ Fights Hate On and Off Stage

Ben Platt, in his new role on Broadway, has so much gloom in store these days that he is confronted by a bright streak.

“I painted my dressing room pink to make it very light and warm and joyful so that I can leave what is happening on stage on stage,” he says.

Platt deserves all the joy he can get playing the doomed main anti-hero in Parade, a musical based on a true story that took place in Atlanta just before World War I.

He plays Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager from Brooklyn who is falsely accused of killing a young girl. He is tried and found guilty, his death sentence is reduced, but then he is lynched by the southern mafia, who do not like his religion and northern values.

“This is a truly human story about how people – because of the trauma of the past – cannot escape the prejudices of their present,” says show director Michael Arden.

The musical is being revived on Broadway just as the nation is experiencing another wave of anti-Semitism that has shrouded even the front door of the theater in darkness. The show’s first preview was overshadowed by several neo-Nazi protesters outside.

It only proved to Platt and the rest of the Parade team that bringing this musical back to the public was the right thing to do in the face of bigotry and bullying.

“I think both in terms of specific anti-Semitism and in terms of just the horrors of social media and the mentality of the online mafia, it seems too modern,” says Platt. “I think everyone felt very tangibly that this was what was needed right now and that there really was a reason for it.”

This marks Platt’s first return to Broadway since his stellar performance in Dear Evan Hansen, which earned him Tonys and Grammys and propelled his career on TV shows like The Politician and a record deal with Atlantic Records. The new musical opens March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

Platt calls Parade a “hidden gem” of musical theater and grew up listening to his songs. It was generally well received by critics in 1998 when it first appeared, and later won a Tony Award for Best Book and Music, but closed within a few months despite writer Alfred Ury’s “Driving Miss Daisy” story, as well as music and texts by several authors. Winner Tony Jason Robert Brown. Platt says it was ahead of its time.

“I think maybe people were just not ready to hear it at that moment,” he says. “There’s a lot of gray in the show, and it’s also the part where racism and antisemitism are dealt with in the same conversation and it’s emphasized that they’re both products, especially in America, of the same white supremacy system.”

Behind the legal drama is a second, the story of two people, Frank and his wife Lucille, whose relationship grows stronger as their lives get more complicated. Michaela Diamond plays Lucille here, and this is the first time Jewish actors are directing a professional production of Parade on this scale.

“I hope this gives those who haven’t already rated it the opportunity to find it and get some of what they might have gotten in the first place,” says Platt.

Viewers will see a complex portrayal of Frank, a fussy, often obnoxious man who dislikes the South and complains about the food when he is first thrown into jail. This challenge attracted Platt.

“There is some moral issue and ambiguity,” says Platt. “I think it is an important message when you represent anyone who has been oppressed or persecuted, let alone a real person, to say that just because someone is not perfect and not entirely virtuous does not mean that they don’t deserve justice and truth.”

Arden grew up in Midland, Texas listening to albums by Broadway actors and was “simply blown away by the soundtrack” to Parade. He watched footage of the original show and saw a version edited at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007.

“Rarely do we have the opportunity to go to the theater and really be challenged to reflect on our own shortcomings in this way and kind of wake up the darkness of our past,” he says. “We must revisit our past, otherwise we will repeat it.”

Arden hopes his direction is focused on the intimacy of marriage, and he’s kept the musical simple, without a lot of props or a heavy hand.

“We kind of present this play as proof that the audience can form their own opinion about something, as opposed to trying to make sure to paint the whole picture in the way that the movie could have done, or perhaps the original play was trying to do,” he said. He. speaks.

It’s a complex, often harrowing show, and Platt plays the part every night in her pink dressing room with some key items: a framed photograph of Leo and Lucille Frank, taken in their happiest state.

“I think it helps me to remember that the main goal here is to honor them and show the love between them and the humanity between them no less, if not more, than the tragedy that befell them,” he says.

There is also a photo of him and his fiancé Noah Galvin and his family, including a photo from his brother’s bar mitzvah. He calls them “reminders of where I’m from and what I have to come home to that Leo couldn’t come home to.”

“As traumatic and dark as this particular story is, my greatest joy in life is being in the theatre,” he adds. “Even going through something like this and emotionally finding my way through it, I go home with such contentment and fulfillment because this is truly my dream.”

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Mark Kennedy is in