Parade - Original London Cast Recording

Parade is one of those controversial "dark" musicals that seem to defy the alleged essence of a genre questionably known as "musical comedy." There is no compelling artistic reason for a musical to end happily. There is, though, a practical reason: Audiences like to leave smiling.

Still, when you think of it, what makes the musical differ from opera is its being musically and vocally less demanding than the latter—essentially drama with singing rather than singing with drama. As such, why should it be denied what is permissible in spoken rather than sung theater, namely no happy ending? Art may use good cheer as a device, or it may use other things: insight, empathy, history, philosophy. In the best sense, entertainment is not synonymous with amusement.

Parade tells the true story of Leo Frank, an innocent Yankee Jew in 1913 Georgia, accused of the sex-murder of a 13-year-old girl worker in the pencil factory whose superintendent he was. After a signally biased Atlanta trial, the governor—sacrificing his political future, but convinced by Leo's devoted wife, Lucille—commuted the death sentence. An angry mob, however, broke into the jail and lynched the hapless Frank, whose only sins were being Brooklyn-born, Jewish and uncharismatic.

The musical derives its title from Confederate Memorial Day, when young Mary Phagan was strangled. Written by Alfred Uhry, who is Southern and Jewish, Parade begins with a Civil War prologue to lead into a Georgia still smarting from defeat half a century later. The millions Northern Jewry spent during two post-trial years trying to save Frank merely inflamed Southern resentment of so-called "outside interference."

[IMG:R]The show had an all-too-short life during Harold Prince's 1998 premiere production at Lincoln Center Theater; the present recording is based on the successful 2007 production at London's Donmar Warehouse directed by Rob Ashford. We get here two CDs rather than the usual one, plus a DVD in which the chief figures behind the show's creation and British re-creation talk about its genesis and revival.

In theory, this is a good format, providing some of the show's spoken text as well as the musical numbers, some newly written for the London production. As for the background material, it obviously skimps by being mostly not especially revelatory talk, and nary a desiderated shot of the actual performance.

But there are problems with the CDs as well. What they offer mostly is the Achilles heel of the show: Jason Robert Brown's music and lyrics. Although Brown, one of a new generation of showbiz songwriters, is not untalented, it here took roughly one third of the show before he came up with a genuine tune. His lyrics are merely serviceable, and even the melody peters out at what should be the climax: Leo and Lucille's final jailhouse duet, which emerges tolerable rather than shattering.

The performers, all unknown to me, do handsomely enough, featuring, whatever their nationality may be, accents almost too Southern. The dialogue passages contribute less than they might, largely because the booklet note, instead of providing a bit by bit synopsis, offers, as written by a case historian, historical data and generalizations.

Even so, fans of Parade—a show that deserves to have them—will find this release of interest; others may get the proverbial half-filled glass.

John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News.