NEW YORK, NY.- Ben Platt, the Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” will return to Broadway next month to lead the cast in a revival of “Parade,” a musical about an early-20th-century lynching of a Jewish businessperson in Georgia.
The revival, directed by Michael Arden (a two-time Tony nominee, for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening”), had a seven-performance run at New York City Center last fall. Platt plays Leo Frank, a factory boss convicted of killing a young girl in a case tainted by antisemitism; Micaela Diamond, who previously played the youngest version of the title character in “The Cher Show” on Broadway, will co-star as Frank’s wife, Lucille.
The show, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry and co-conceived by Hal Prince, had a brief run on Broadway that opened in 1998; it was commercially unsuccessful but won Tony Awards for both book and score. The history it depicts is real: Frank was convicted in 1913, lynched in 1915 (at age 31) and in 1986 was posthumously pardoned.
The musical’s exploration of antisemitism has made it more timely now, when there is rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond. The City Center production garnered uniformly strong reviews: In The New York Times, Juan A. Ramírez called it “the best-sung musical in many a New York season.”
The “Parade” revival will begin previews Feb. 21 and open March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, where the musical “Almost Famous” closed Sunday. The “Parade” production is planning a short run, to Aug. 6.
The revival is being produced by Seaview, a company created by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea that previously produced “Slave Play” and “POTUS,” and Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company that operates two Broadway houses (the Hudson and the Lyric) and also produces shows.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
