Gil Hates Everything

My introduction to Jason Robert Brown’s songwriting: I was in the audience for the 2005 Voice Of Musical Theatre final when Tom Solomon came out and sang “Big News” as the second of his three songs, and we all stared at one another and said, “Well, fuck, he’s won, hasn’t he?”

(He won. Talk about bringing a katana to a knife fight.)

The book for this show is by Alfred Uhry, and it’s the third part of his “Atlanta trilogy” which began with “Driving Miss Daisy” and continued with a play called “The Last Night Of Ballyhoo”. Sondheim was apparently the first choice for the songs, but he declined, giving Jason Robert Brown his big chance; he’d worked with Daisy Prince, daughter of the show’s producer Harold, on “Songs For A New World”. Talk about who you know ;)

So what’s the story? Marietta, Georgia, 1913: a Brooklyn Jew, Leo Frank, has married a Georgia girl, Lucille, and now runs a pencil factory employing young girls from the town. He doesn’t feel comfortable down here in the South; she doesn’t feel comfortable with his discomfort in her home. It’s Memorial Day. And one of the girls is found dead in the factory…

The storytelling choices give JRB a lot of opportunity to create atmosphere. The opening number, “The Old Red Hills Of Home”, is a gorgeous evocation of sentiment and its power, and the first six songs assemble a portrait of Leo and Lucille and the townsfolk around them. Then comes “Big News”, and I can, now that the disappointment has settled, see why JRB cut it from the 2007 revival… it’s a killer song, fabulously descriptive of the bored newspaperman’s mental state… but it’s out of place where it is, and the journalist doesn’t have a significant enough role in the rest of the show to earn him any other solos, so – okay, fine, it’s gone, sniff.

Anyway, I hope you wrung the maximum laughter out of it on the CD, because next, bang! we’re at the funeral of that girl, meticulously crafted while not exploitative; the journalist’s narration is heartbreaking. And then we’re into the weirdness of a reprise of a song that’s been cut: “Real Big News”, which is just awesome, one of those songs which stages itself in your head as you listen. You may remember my banging on about the songs from “The Music Man”; this is easily at their level. In a fast-paced feat of yellow journalism, Leo is brought to trial, but not before Lucille has sung the stinging, bitter “You Don’t Know This Man”, which ought to be in everyone’s repertoire… it’s made still more powerful by the fact that Lucille is defending her husband in public, but has secret personal doubts.

And yes, the trial is conducted through song. The highlight of this sequence is “Come Up To My Office”, the prosecution’s hypothesis about how Leo committed the murder, which on stage is handled by the horribly creepy trick of having Leo suddenly stand up from his defendant’s position and sing and act out his alleged actions. “That’s What He Said”, the night watchman’s testimony, is also quite horrible, since there’s enough subtext going on that you can almost see the guy’s smirk as he lies, lies, lies to incriminate Leo.

And when Leo is found guilty, you’re appalled by the fading-in of bouncy dance music for the citizens of Marietta over the sonorous chimes of the courtroom bell and the jury’s iteration of the verdict. But it’s just another moment of casual-seeming genius for “Parade”.

To be honest, after “A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’” – the extremely interesting view of the situation outlined by the black houseservants watching the white Jew’s plight as it draws political attention from the North – the second act then dips a little in places, in comparison to the laser-focused genius of the first. There’s a song switch between CD and revised version (“The Glory”) which I wasn’t sold on. But then we’re back on track with “This Is Not Over Yet”, the first of two sky-high duets for Leo and Lucille as their legal challenge approaches success, and “Feel The Rain Fall”, set amidst the chain gang, is a stark blues tune in which the evidence against Leo is holed below the waterline. It’s all going so well. The governor commutes his sentence to life imprisonment, but at least it’s a life.

And Leo and Lucille spend a night together, and sing the utterly, utterly fantastic “All The Wasted Time”, as the Franks realize that their marriage has been filled with doubt and difference and walls, and now they know how much life truly means to them, as the barriers come down between them forever.

And early the next morning, men in hoods show up at the prison. And they fucking lynch him.

“Parade” is based on a true story, and as usual with true stories, there’s some contention about the facts. The show takes the plausible but not proven stance that Leo was innocent and that the night watchman was probably responsible. But I don’t really want to get into analyzing the historical basis, and it didn’t subtract from the show’s emotional credibility to read up on the issues of that specific case afterwards. It’s not like the story doesn’t conjure a plausible atmosphere in presenting the complex politics of hate. The plot may be the apparent murder of a Southern girl by a Yankee Jew, but the show is just as much about how it felt to lose the Civil War, to have a home and then not have one, to not be able to look the man or woman standing next to you in the eye, and how you have to live with what’s imposed upon you.

As you can probably guess, I feel there are enough great songs on this soundtrack to put this show in the top bracket. It’s a terrible shame that “Parade”, after winning the major Tonys for 1999, closed prematurely because of backer bankruptcy. As it is, it’s a major work, and as a collaboration with a skilful playwright and production team, it – thankfully – takes the pressure off Jason Robert Brown in terms of his tics as a solo composer, leaving him with nothing to do except write career-highlight song after song.

You should see this show. Not just because the story is a searing indictment and savage critique and so forth, but because it definitively proves that a musical can be those things without sacrificing accessibility and tunefulness. It finds a way to musicalize an enormous range of emotions, and it doesn’t angelize and demonize for simplicity’s sake; the characters are real, and their motivations are real. It doesn’t leave its work to the script, it doesn’t bore you, it doesn’t talk down to you musically, or look up in helpless cuteness, and as a special bonus for me, it doesn’t have any tap-dancing that I remember. It may well be the best musical I’ve actually seen myself. I don’t care if you disagree with me when I hand out four out of ten for your favourite show, but in God’s name, when I hand out ten out of ten, I do it for a reason.

Random Panda is, therefore, not in the slightest way random today. Ten out of ten. Should this show ever manifest anywhere within a hundred miles of you, you have your instructions.

(originally posted 2009)