THEATRE REVIEW: PARADE
5 JAN/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

When it comes to the current Studio 180/Acting Up Stage Company production that opened on the stage of the Berkeley Street Theatre Monday, this is one PARADE likely to pass a lot of people by. For while it may indeed be a homecoming PARADE of sorts - the work had some of its earliest workshops here in Toronto, after all - it fails in this goodhearted pass-by to stir the kind of passions required to make it memorable in any sort of emotional sense.

Of course, part of that must be attributed to the work itself, for while a few more intimate productions of the work haves succeeded, even the great Hal Prince couldn't bring enough life to the theatrical collaboration of playwright Alfred Uhry and composer Jason Robert Brown that it could sustain prolonged Broadway run. And small wonder, when you consider all they've tried to cram into a two-and-a-half-hour musical that covers off on everything from murder and anti-Semitism to the resentment that smoulders still in the wake of the American civil war.

PARADE is set in Atlanta circa 1913, and tells the story of Leo Frank, a transplanted Brooklyn Jew seemingly wrongly convicted and then hanged by vigilantes for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee in the pencil factory Frank managed. To bring it to life on the Toronto stage, director Joel Greenberg and his musical director Paul Sportelli have assembled an impressive cast, headed by Michael Therriault as Frank and Tracy Michailidis as his long-suffering wife, Lucille - a cast that includes veterans like Jay Turvey, George Masswohl, Neil Barclay and Gabrielle Jones as well as relative newcomers like Daren A. Herbert, Jeff Irving and Jordy Rolfe.

But while few could argue with Greenberg's staging of the work - he makes full use of Michael Gianfrancesco's sprawling but effective set, and keep things moving at a good clip - his work here lacks directorial depth. Concerned as it is with events and human foibles, Uhry's Tony-winning book is short on character development. And while some directors would see this as an opportunity, Greenberg clearly subscribes to the notion that if it isn't on the page, it's not going to be on the stage. The result here is a stage full of Georgia stereotypes.

In the face of the challenges represented in the role of Leo Frank - a character suspicious enough on some level to justify the vilification heaped oh him, while at the same time human enough to garner audience sympathy - the usually talented and inventive Therriault resorts to a series of sustained tics. Meanwhile, Michailidis' Lucille ignores the growth in her character and resides in a world of wide-eyed hurt throughout. As the unfortunate Mary, Jessica Greenberg doesn't so much strike all the right childish notes as beat them into submission, while Turvey, despite some fine moments as a compassionate politician, utterly misses the mark as cynical journalist Britt Craig.

Save for a few memorable scenes - Irving's turn in The Picture Show, and a breakout turn from Herbert in a number titled Blues: Feel the Rain Fall - Greenberg takes us through a murder with no horror, a funeral with no grief, a trial with no tension and a lynching with no outrage. While he's assembled all the elements for a memorable PARADE, in marshalling this production, he contents himself with maintaining a nice even flow to the proceedings, when what he needs to do is get out in front of it all and decide just where it's going. And then take it - and us - there.