Posted on October 2, 2007 at 9:30 pm

Susannah Clapp’s review here.

Sunday September 30, 2007
Susannah Clapp
The Observer

Parade Donmar, London WC2

No one should rain on Parade. It’s that rare thing, a really surprising musical. It’s new (transferring to the Donmar after a hugely successful Broadway debut); it’s based on a true and grim story; it packs a huge sound, and a big cast, into a small space that vibrates with disturbance. Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry have dramatised the case of Leo Frank, a factory manager in Atlanta convicted – probably wrongly – of the murder of a young girl in 1913. Parade challenges the verdict and accuses the Atlanta citizens of anti-Semitism.

Rob Ashford, choreographer turned director, projects the hideous cruelty of the wholesome in a triumphalist cakewalk, at once spiky and jaunty. The mother of the little girl – a blonde who flits in powder blue – mourns her daughter in a lament like an Edwardian parlour song. There are raw strings, a powerful chainsaw chorus, strong gospel and twanging country. As Frank, Bertie Carvel – with his bent body, no-eye-contact head, suddenly over-active limbs and simple, repetitive plea given to unadorned piano notes – is tremendous as a fellow who’s both completely pitiable and liable to excite suspicion. You don’t often get ambiguity in musicals: you do here.