PARADE - This Is London
Donmar Theatre

Does the West End really need
another musical? The answer is a
resounding ‘Yes’ as far as this absorbing
and troubling production is concerned.
You're unlikely to leave the theatre
humming the tunes, but Alfred Uhry
(book) and Jason Robert Brown (music
and lyrics) have dramatised a true story
exposing the deep-seated prejudice
which led to a blatant miscarriage of
justice and the result is completely
engrossing.
Pencil factory superintendent Leo
Frank was an educated, Jewish New
Yorker who married a Southerner and
moved to Atlanta, Georgia. But he
remained an outsider who never felt at
home nor embraced the idiosyncrasies
of the South. So when, in 1913, a 13
year old white female employee, Mary
Phagan, was found dead in the
basement of their workplace, the locals
and the conviction-hungry police swiftly
accepted the slight circumstantial
evidence and the suspect testimony of a
black employee as proof of his guilt.
Rob Ashford's direction of this 1998
Broadway show is pacey and fluent and,
especially in the trial scenes, his
choreography integrates perfectly with
the ambiguities of the unfolding story.
The cast, too, is excellent. In the
pivotal role of the accused Yankee Leo
Frank, Bertie Carvel has just the right
uncomfortable, hand wringing diss-ease
of a man who doesn't fit in and knows it.
Lara Pulver is touching as the loyal wife
who barely waivers in her belief that the
unemotional workaholic she married
couldn't possibly be a murderer, Gary
Milner is sleekly effective as both a
persistent newshound and a senator who
changes his mind, and Shaun Escoffery
is quite simply sensational as the
prosecution's main witness.

Louise Kingsley