The national tour of the musical, Parade, marches into Denver's Buell Theatre Sept. 12-24.
The Tony Award-winner for book (Alfred Uhry) and score (Jason Robert Brown) is directed and co-conceived by Harold Prince, who restaged the tour a year after it played a short 1999 run at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.
The musical retells one of the most notorious crimes in American history, the murder of young Mary Phagan, which led to the persecution of innocent Leo Frank, a northern Jew in an anti-Semitic South.
This four-month tour of short bookings continues to Oct. 29. David Pittu, late of the national tour of Titanic, and Andrea Burns, recently of Off-Broadway's Saturday Night, play Leo and Lucille Frank, respectively, in the serious-minded, fact-based musical about murder, race, anti Semitism in 1913 Atlanta.
Choreographer Patricia Birch and designers Riccardo Hernandez (set) and Howell Binkley (lighting) reunite for the summer-to fall 2000 tour. The company includes Adinah Alexander (Mrs. Phagan), Ray Aranha (Newt Lee), Kristen Cullen (Mary Phagan), Jeff Edgerton (Young Solider/Fiddlin' John), Donal Grody (Old Soldier/Judge Roan), Rick Hilsabeck (Governor Slaton), Daniel Frank Kelley (Frankie Epps), Keith Byron Kirk (Jim Conley), Randy Redd (Britt Craig), Peter Samuels (Hugh Dorsey), David Vosburgh (Luther Rosser/Floyd MacDaniel), John Leslie Wolfe (Tom Watson). The ensemble includes Anne Allgood, Mimi Bessette, Justin Bohon, Elizabeth Brownlee, Diana Brownstone, David Coolidge, David Dannehl, Sandra DeNise, Peter Flynn, Carla J. Hargrove, Tim Howard, Siri Howard, Jamie Johhson, Raissa Katona, Emily Klein, Corey Reynolds, Greg Roderick, Laura Schutter, Natasha Yvette Williams.
Sound designer is Duncan Edwards, costume designer is Judith Dolan and Clayton Phillips in assistant to Prince.
Reprising their original Broadway roles are Klein as Essie, Edgerton as the Young Soldier, Wolfe as Watson and Aranha as Newt Lee. Original cast members returning in new roles are Alexander as Mrs. Phagan, Redd as Britt Craig and Samuel as Hugh Dorsey.
The tour began June 13-18 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.
Tickets in Denver are $15-$55. For information, call (303) 893-4100.
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The tour continues its limited run Sept. 26-Oct.15 at 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle and then plays Oct. 17-29 at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH, where it will close.
An original cast recording of Parade is available on the RCA label. The script and lyrics were published in the summer 2000 issue of Show Music magazine.
-- By Kenneth Jones
