Performance

Jeff Malet • May 15, 2012

The Folger Theatre’s current production of William Shakespeare’s classic, “The Taming Of The Shrew” is set in the American Wild West. The elaborate stage, from designer Tony Cisek, has been modeled as a western saloon, repleat with bar, swinging doors, chandolier, and a staircase that leads to an upstairs balcony.

The main plot of the play depicts the courtship of Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, and the headstrong Katherine. At first, Katherine is an unwilling participant in the relationship, but Petruchio “tames” her using various forms of psychological warfare until she becomes compliant. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherine’s more desirable sister, Bianca.

The leading rolls of Petruchio and Katherine are performed by the real life husband and wife team of Cody Nickell and Kate Eastwood Norris. Further color has been added in the form of recording artist Cliff Eberhardt performing original music in the role of the ‘Blind Baladeer’.

The Taming of The Shrew plays through June 10, 2012 at Folger Theatre, at The Folger Shakespeare Library which is located at 201 East Capitol Street, SE, in Washington, DC. For tickets, call 202-544-7077, or order them online.

View our photos of the Folger’s Taming of the Shrew by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="100791,124257,124265,124274,124282,124290,124299,124308,124316,124325,124333,124248,124239,124370,124186,124364,124194,124356,124203,124350,124213,124221,124229,124342" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • May 10, 2012

Washington theater folks often complain that D.C. theater doesn’t get respect in New York.

It’s true that New Yorkers tend to get culturally snooty about D.C., mainly because, you sometimes suspect, the Broadway theater tickets are astronomical (as opposed to just outrageous in D.C.), because you have to take a loan out to go to the Metropolitan Opera, because where else is a musical about Bonnie and Clyde a good idea and because there is no such thing as a free museum in New York. Mama MOMA, indeed.

But, Gothamites, beware. D.C. theater is no slouch. Look what’s up for Tonys for best drama: Bruce Norris’s comedy-drama about gentrification, “Clybourne Park,” and wonder-writer-adapter David Ives’s “Venus in Fur.” We should be so lucky to see such plays. Hmm, wait . . . we are so lucky. “Clybourne Park” was staged twice at Woolly Mammoth, no less, where Norris is a particularly favorite playwright. “Venus in Fur” was last seen at the Studio Theatre, where Ives is a favorite there.

And look what may win a Tony for best revival of a musical and best performance by an actor (Danny Burstein) and an actress (Jan Maxwell) in a musical: the Kennedy Center production of “Follies,” directed by Eric Schaeffer (Signature Theatre) and studiously ignored by the Helen Hayes Awards here. “Follies” premiered at the Kennedy Center in a dazzling and difficult production, was tinkered with and made a big impression in its Broadway debut. It is now preparing for an Los Angeles run. All in all, “Follies” was nominated for eight Tonys.

Also, “Master Class,” starring Tyne Daly, is up for a best dramatic revival Tony. It began life at the Kennedy Center.

If that’s not enough to stand up and take notice of Washington theater, there’s the fact that the Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company, headed by artistic director Michael Kahn, received this year’s special Regional Theatre Tony. The award, which Kahn will receive at the Tony Awards ceremonies in New York June 10, marks a kind of climax of his 25-year tenure as artistic director. [gallery ids="100783,123754,123744,123749" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The sounds of the great Western composers, such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, performed by internationally acclaimed musicians. The food, the socializing and networking, the kibitzing, the receptions at embassies, ambassadorial residences and international cultural centers. They’re all perfectly good reasons to check out the Embassy Series, Washington’s unique musical series.

But Embassy Series founder Jerome Barry had something additional in mind when he began and developed the series. It’s called cultural diplomacy by way of musical diplomacy, a vision which has allowed him to enlarge the series to embrace a truly international vista.

The Iraqi Cultural Center at 1630 Connecticut Ave., N.W., in Dupont Circle provides an ideal setting and example for conducting that sort of cultural diplomacy Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. when the Two Rivers Eastern Ensemble, a six-piece group of Middle Eastern and Western artists combine their talents to produce an evening of jazz fused with Maqam, a 400-year-old genre of Arab music which originated in ancient Iraq. The Two Rivers Eastern Ensemble will perform using both folkloric (the santour) and modern (the trumpet) instruments, singing in Arabic, and dressed in traditional ethnic outfits.

“Many instruments such as al-oud, a-santur and the tambourine were invented in ancient Mesopotamia,” said Jabir Habeb, Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq to the United States. “The Sumerians were the first to compose the musical system. This ancient music was shared by many ethnic groups who lived in this region including Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Armenians and Turks. The Maqams were considered by many to be the foundation of Eastern music.”

“These unique artists are meant to emphasize Iraq’s music , history and cultural influence,” Barry said. The artists are unique to the American scene while many are of Iraqi origin. In terms of the Embassy Series, “this is what we mean when we talk about uniting people through musical diplomacy,” Barry said. “We provide a forum–through concerts–that combines music with information about a country’s culture and history.”

In 2010, with the long, grinding effects of the war in Iraq still being felt by both nations, the first such concert at the Iraqi Cultural Center provided an electric evening of different cultures meeting–and often whistling with approval–on a musical playing field. Audiences used to the rapt listening atmosphere of classical music concerts also provided by the Embassy Series soon joined in the more participatory atmosphere of the concert of Iraq music using ancient musical instruments which created rhythmic, soulful sounds and songs.

In its 18-year history, the Embassy Series has performed in more than 60 embassies, residences, chanceries, diplomatic chanceries and cultural institutions, opening up the world of countries and cultures not encountered on such an intimate level. The series was the first to perform at the newly opened embassies of many former Soviet-bloc, Eastern European countries in the 1990s, and performed at the Cuban Interests Section, the Vietnamese Embassy and the opening of the new (and huge) Chinese Embassy in 2010.

Tickets are $80, which includes a post-concert reception. For more information, visit www.embassyseries.org.
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Gary Tischler •

Look up! Look out!

If you’re out and about in the city between May 6 and 12, whether you’re walking, reading a newspaper or texting on the Metro or bus, or on a bench or eating at your favorite restaurant across the city, check it out. Look up! Look out!

Look out is probably the operating phrase because May 6 through 12 marks the duration of the Kennedy Center’s “Look Both Ways: Street Arts Across America,” featuring dozens of artists of all kinds and genres popping up and sideways, doing their special thing at far-flung locations throughout the city.

Between May 6 and 12, you won’t have to go to Capitol Hill to see fools in action. The free festival celebrates the now-and-new energy of live right there beside you or up above you interactive performance. You may stumble upon or plan to see a circus-punk marching band, political puppet theater, jugglers, contortionists, stunt dogs, dancers, acrobats and fly-by-nighters, for all we know, throughout the city.

You can find them at such locations as Eastern Market, the Half Street Fair Grounds, Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Farragut Square, the Old Post Office Pavilion (Look up!) and Yards Park as well as the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.

You will see, hear, feel and be dazzled and amazed by:

Acrobuffos, Ambush, Karen Beriss, Bert the Nerd, the Bread and Puppet Theater, Nick Cave, Circolombia, Entomo, the Exit Studio’s Edwon Fontanez, Happenstance Theater, Oesole’s Dance Project, Midnight Circus, Mutts Gone Nuts, Valesa Aaria Populoh, the Project Bandaloop, the Red Trouser Show, Mamomanem and Yo-Yo People, among others.

“Look Both Ways: Street Arts Across America” is one in a series of festivals produced and sponsored by the Kennedy Center, which have included “Country: A Celebration of America’s Music,” “A Cappella: Singing Solo” and “Gospel Across America.”

On May 6, Bert the Nerd, Happenstance Theatre, Mouth Monster and Nana Projects will kicks things off by invading Eastern Market at 225 7th St., S.E. On May 11 between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., there will be action at the Old Post Office Pavilion, up and down the building as a matter of fact. Performers that night include Ambush, Bert the Nerd, Entomo, Paolo Garbanzo, Project Bandaloop and Rob Torres.

Pretty much all of the performers will show up at noon at the Yards Park (entrances at 3rd, 4th and Water Streets, S.E.) on May 12. [gallery ids="100784,123766,123750,123758" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • May 3, 2012

Everybody in Washington’s theater community will show up tonight for the 28th annual Helen Hayes Awards at the Warner Theatre, but that’s only the beginning for what this year is theatreWeek in Washington, which would be April 23-29.

Sponsored and spearheaded by theatreWashington, the D.C. group that supports, promotes and represents Washington area theatres, artists and audiences, theatreWeek will make its debut with a series of special events including Playtime, a series of events aimed squarely at children.

The Helen Hayes Awards and Ovation Gala at the Warner Theatre and J.W. Marriott Hotel kicks everything off, featuring awards that showcase the general and specific excellence of Washington’s theatre world, with special honors going to two-time, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey.

On Wednesday, D.C. professionals and Washington theater-lovers hook up with “Show Tunes and Cocktails with Joshua Morgan” from 7 to 8 p.m. at Napoleon Bistro and Lounge in Adams Morgan.

On Thursday, it’s time for “Theatre Critics: It’s Only Their Opinion, What They Do and How They Do It.” (While not attending, I can be reached at The Georgetowner, if you want my opinion). Actually, it’s a conversation with Washington Post Critic Peter Marks and other critics from 7 to 8 p.m. (Location to be announced)

On Friday, you get a sneak peek at “In Rehearsal,” a new book by actor and director Gary Sloan, 5 to 6:30 p.m. at Bus Boys and Poets at 14th and V Streets, N.W.

And then there’s Playtime, with workshops, classes and tours for kids at 13 theatres throughout the region on April 22, 27, 28 and 29. Participating are Adventure Theatre, Compass Rose Studio Theater, Faction of Fools Theatre Company, Folger Theatre, Imagination Stage, National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, the National Theatre, the Puppet Company, Round House Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, the Theatre Lab and Toby’s Dinner Theatre.

Gary Tischler •

Who would have thought that fur—event thinking about it, let alone wearing it—would be so popular in town, especially in this weather?

But when it’s “Venus In Fur,” playwright David Ives’ witty, hot – yes, hot – and, if you’ll pardon the expression, whip-smart take on Sacher-Masoch’s shocking 19th century novel about a stage audition, sexual and creative power struggles between an actress and director, people just can’t stop talking and going.

The production—one of the best and beguiling of the year anywhere—has been extended yet again on final time to July 31 at the Studio Theatre where you can watch a breakout performance by Erica Sullivan, in assorted nasty getups and with a range that creates whiplash in the audience. If you haven’t seen this show, by all means go. If you’ve already seen it, go again. David Muse, the Studio’s new artistic director is in charge here, and he handles matters with a deft, intelligent manner.

There’s more reason than “Venus” to visit the Studio these days. There’s the appropriately entitled “Pop,” a new musical-mystery-pop-show by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs focusing on the heady (and final) days of Andy Warhol’s New York Factory scene, where Andy reigned supreme in his pursuit of putting sizzle in all things mundane and plain. If you’re interested in all things Warhol and pop art, this is your cup of tea (no sugar please), and if not it’s an education on a number of American obsessions, not the least of which is Warhol, who turned greenbacks and tomato soup into high and low art, and once made a day-long movie which had nothing but the Empire State building as its focus.

Warhol will be talked about and written about forever, so why not a musical? Especially if it has Warhol staple members in it like Candy Darling, Ondine and assorted would-be and not artists, hangers-on, feminists and girlies and whatever lies in between. Keith Alan Baker, the Studio’s pop-meister, directs with Hunter Styles and Jennifer Harris. “Pop” runs through July 31.

And speaking of the Studio Theater, we would be remiss if we did note the recent departure of David Cale’s “The History of Kisses,” a sweet, lovely string of pearls and tales performed by the one-man-show and playwright that is Cale. Less fraught with tensions and puzzles and less flamboyant than some of his previous work, this saw Cale pondering the puzzles of how people meet, love – or not – bounce and stumble into and out of other people’s lives.

An ocean theme—one of the characters was a man attending a gathering of sea shanty aficionados in California—carried the tide, so to speak, saw one woman meet an inarticulate Portuguese sailor for ship-board encounter that produced a son, if not lasting love, two gay men meeting cute and ending up deliriously in awe in front of a fish tank, an Australian land-wrecked at a seaside motel and a man remembering a wistful encounter with Judy Garland during a beach walk.

These stories pop up in my mind occasionally during a land-locked, hot summer. So sing a shanty to Mr. Cale.

The Millennium Stage, the Kennedy Center’s nightly series of free performances of music and dance has added something new for the hot month of August—it will offer a Happy Hour Series every Monday night at 6 p.m. On August 1, 8, 22 and 29, the Kennedy Center’s Atrium on the Roof Terrace will become a summer lounge with couches, a dance floor and a full bar. The Lounge will continue on August 15 at the Kennedy Center’s Grand Foyer.

It’s a different way to catch entirely characteristic performances that have been the hallmark of the Millennium Series. The Happy Hour Series includes singer Badi Assad, who presents a world flavor with an exotic mixture of ethnic sounds on August 1. DeboBand presents Ethiopian flavored music August 8. New Orleans singer/songwriter Mia Borders blends funk, soul and contemporary styles August 15. August 22 brings Alma Tropicalia and a tribute to the classic BrazilianTropicalia movement of the 1960s. On August 29, Rahim AlHash and the Little Earth Orchestra are on hand with its group of world musicians from Iraq, Brazil, Africa, Palestine and America.

And now for something completely different. At Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center and its Devine Studio Theatre, there’s a chance to see “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” a world premiere production of an adaptation of Michael Pollan’s famed non-fiction book about how, why, where and what people eat in the modern world. It’s written, conceived and directed by Natsu Onada Power of Georgetown University, and can be seen July 27-29 and July 30 and 31. Check PerformingArts.Georgetown.edu for details.

Want to find something to laugh about—and God knows we all do? Check out the opening of D.C.’s new Riot Act Comedy Theater with a grand opening celebration of the city’s own star comedians, Big Al Goodwin, Tony Woods and Charles Fleischer, who perform at 801 E St. beginning August 11-13.
And we would also be remiss without mentioning, although we do it with some trepidation, the impending last performance of Cherry Red Productions, arguably the city’s filthiest—in a good way—theater company ever. We could produce some of the more memorable titles from the Cherry Red past as offered, but can’t. Suffice to say that Cherry Red offered—often in small and dark places—dark plays that had the whiff of a zeitgeist that combined the American 1980s with the worst and best times of Weimar Berlin. I think.

In any case, founders Ian Allen and Chris Griffin are closing out with a production of “The Aristocrats,” a stage version of what’s described as the dirtiest joke of all time. Cherry Red’s promised to do bad things to the joke, which also came in movie form with an all-star cast of potty-mouths like Sarah Silverman.

Look for it at the Warehouse Theater August 27 at 8:30 and 11 p.m.
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Gary Tischler •

Washington experienced a wrenching and rare one-two weather punch in one week — an unprecedented earthquake followed by a hurricane.
The Washington National Opera Company had a year that was almost as momentous and earthshaking, but with much more salutatory results. In 2011, the company saw the resignation of its long-time maestro, Artistic Director Placido Domingo. This was followed this summer by the announcement of an Affiliation Plan by the WNO with the Kennedy Center, a far-reaching development that brings a great deal of stability, while adding the musical jewel that is the WNO to the Center. In addition it was announced that Francesca Zambello, a renowned director familiar to Washington audiences, was appointed the WNO’s artistic Advisor. No replacement has yet been named for Domingo.
That’s a lot of change and upheaval for any artistic institution, yet the WNO is preparing to start the 2011-2012 season with its production of Puccini’s “Tosca” Sept. 10 in an upbeat, high-energy mood.
“Obviously, the affiliation is a win-win for everyone,” said Christina Scheppelman, director of artistic operations for the WNO. “It’s been in the works and talked about for a long time and that makes it an exciting time for us. But the 2010-2011 season has been planned four to five years in advance and was in place already before all of this came about.”
With “Tosca” to be followed by Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in November, the WNO starts its season with two operas that are more operatic than most. “They’re very dramatic operas, they’re full of the kinds of devices and characters with over-the-top situations with grand, familiar, classic music and singing and arias,” Scheppelman said. In other words, they’re full of murder, tragedy, great passion and sacrifice and larger-than-life heroines and villains, not to mention suicide, madness and other sundry deeds on wind-swept battlements.
It’s familiar stuff, to be sure, and familiarity and popularity sometimes grates on critics who want to see more cutting edge stuff. “Our first responsibility,” Scheppelman said, “is to our audiences, and to make sure that we deliver artistic productions of the highest quality. So, yes, you’re going to see a ‘Madame Butterfly,’ but people forget that we’ve also, successfully I might add, done terrific productions of ‘A View from the Bridge’ and ‘Billy Budd’ among other more contemporary operas.”
Michael Mael, the newly appointed executive director, hailed WNO’s new affiliation. “It gives us all the resources which the Kennedy Center can bring to bear, plus we have the center’s president, Michael Kaiser, who has run an opera company, who has a great passion for opera, who is an exceptional representative and leader for the arts world-wide.”
“My responsibility is to make sure we have a world-class company and that we never sacrifice artistic excellence,” Mael said. “I came to opera relatively late, but when it happened, I fell in love with it”
Many of the programs put in place by Domingo remain including the Celebrity Artist series, which won’t begin until March with soprano Angela Gheorghiu. Domingo himself has not disappeared—he returns to conduct “Tosca” which will be directed by Dzvid Kneuss.
“Tosca” will also be part of the WNO’s hugely popular “Opera in the Outfield” series, in which a live performance of the opera will be simulcast to audiences at the Washington Nationals Park for free on Sept. 22.
“Tosca” is why Puccini, as a composer of classic opera, is the king, all Wagner devotees aside. Puccini has the three most popular, most enduring and tear-stained, high-drama operas ever written. And the music that goes with them lives outside them in familiar forms. Giacomo Puccini, as the composer of “La Boheme,” “Madama Butterfly” and “Tosca,” made an achievement something on the order of hitting 60 home runs three season in a row without the aid of steroids.
The promos call “Tosca” an “irresistible combination of passion, pathos and despair,” the trifecta of tragic opera. It includes the classic arias “Vissi d’arte” and “E lucevan le stele.” It stars the country’s top singing actors in soprano Patricai Racette as Floria Tosca, a hot-blooded singer placed in impossible situations trying to save her lover from the double-crossing, impassioned and lust-struck Baron Scarpio, performed by bass-baritone Alan Held. (Natalia Ushakova will sing Tosca Sept. 23).
There are nine performances on Sept. 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23 and 24 and one matinee Sept. 18.
Donizetti may not have had as many super-legendary hits as Puccini (who has?), but he came up with one of opera’s most hysterical, hugely dramatic, over-the-top and, well, operatic, operas in “Lucia di Lammemoor.” Famous for its mad scene (see the late Joan Sutherland), a challenge to any living, high-note soprano in the world willing to take on the role. It’s directed by David Alden and double-cast with Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova and Sarah Coburn as the Lucias. There are eight performances Nov. 10 through 19.
Let the season begin.
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Gary Tischler •

There are certain images that come to mind when you think of classical music, and pianist Till Fellner, a rising star in the world of classical music performers, embodies quite a few of those if you’ve ever seen him perform.

The last time Washington saw Fellner, who is being presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center Oct. 1, he played at the Austrian Embassy as part of Jerome Barry’s Embassy Series Season, which was also the concluding program in Fellner’s ambitious project to perform the complete 32-part cycle of Beethoven sonatas.

Played on a Sunday afternoon before a sold-out but intimate audience, the Embassy Series program was a coming together of artist, music and audience, and a rather romantic display of the culture of classical music. It came with all the practiced history and rituals one would hope for, from the hollering of “Bravo!” to the flying of tailcoats.

An occasion like this has its roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, when music was played in front of kings and members of the courts. It was played by candlelight and under chandeliers, in churches and the drawing rooms of aristocracy. The audiences are no longer quite so elite or powerful, but certain manners, mannerisms and behavioral traditions still persist. Just like the tradition remains that important cast members take curtain calls in between acts at an opera, so there are certain expectations at a concert or recital. After all, the music of the classical Forefathers—in this case Beethoven—is being played.

Fellner is Viennese and European to the core, but he is also a citizen of the world by dint of the global explosion of interest and competition in classical music. He understands and appreciates the seriousness of what he does. “The music is all that matters,” he said in a brief international telephone conversation, where he was taking in the evening tide in the old city of Vienna. “You are in service to the music, it’s the most important thing there is. And on such occasions, there are certain ways of doing things. There’s a respect that is due to the music, from myself playing it to the best of my abilities and understanding, and from the audience in terms of listening.”

You don’t get grand gestures from Fellner, no thumping on the keys with over emphasized drama, no hair or headshaking that one might get from musicians who play the keys to elicit applause. Fellner, although tall and almost boyishly handsome at age 38, will not try to seduce an audience with body language. Rather, he tries to ford the defenses of the heart with perfect performances and worship the music with his playing.

The airy embassy spaces, sunlit and bright, were an ideal setting. Fellner walked up to the shiny black piano with a quick and friendly nod, resplendent in tuxedo and tails, sat at the piano—arranging the tails just so—and began to play to the kind of communal silence that sometimes catches you off guard.

“I believe,” he said, in precise and fluent English, “that there are certain traditions to be followed, and that it is a part of the music, the occasion. There’s a certain formality and I like that, but it doesn’t interfere with feelings and emotions.”

Fellner carries with him the life of a concert pianist, and with it a mountain of ever-growing challenges. He lives in a world that seems to be at a contradictory phase—there are more and more classical musicians being trained all over the world, especially in Asia, while at the same time interest in classical music, while not in any sort of dramatic decline, still seems pointed to a closed world made up of the affording class.

But bridges are being built in the music industry, often with real artists on the forefront, who fuse their talents with giants from the world of pop music. But Fellner isn’t one of them—at least not yet. “I like some popular music,” he said. “Some of the artists are very good. But on the whole, I’m not that interested in rock music and things like that, nor do I have any desire to play it. There are plenty of challenges in playing the music that already exists—every pianist, violinist and so on takes on projects that are difficult and challenging. And the Sonatas was one of mine.”

Still, Fellner understands that the classical repertoire—Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms and Wagner, to name a few—needs to be replenished and added to, and he’s not stuck in the past in that sense.
“There’s actually a lot of new composers and new classical music being written, and I also like playing the works of the 20th century composers. There is a different sort of challenge in the new.”

Fellner’s program at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Oct. 1 is a kind of indicator of direction: the richness of the past and the potential for the future. There are Haydn, Schumann, and Liszt, and there is also 19-year-old classical music sensation Kit Armstrong.

“Kit is a prodigy. As a performer, as a composer, he’s just amazing,” Fellner said. “I’m playing ‘Half of One, Six Dozens of the Other,’ which he wrote for me in 2010.”

Fellner has been praised all over world and received raves like this from the London Observer: “Fellner confirmed his standing among the foremost keyboard virtuosi of the day; exact, limpid and feather-fingered, he exquisitely conveyed the sense of yearning haunting the andante and cruised effortlessly through the teasing syncopations of the closing allegro of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18.”
He will treat Armstrong’s music like he treats a Beethoven sonata, as if in the interpretive position of high priest.

Till Fellner will be performing at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 1, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society. For more information visit Kennedy-Center.org

Gary Tischler •

“Parade” (now at Ford’s Theatre through Oct. 30) sounds like a musical, it pretends to be a musical, it has fast numbers, soft numbers, ballads and rousing numbers that make you want to tap your feet.
As musicals go, “Parade,” with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, is kind of subversive, so much so that an audience can get tricked into clapping after a rousing song sung by a gifted singer and then almost instantly feel weird for do so.

The number in question is “That’s What He Said,” sung by Kevin McAllister as Jim Conley, an African-American janitor at a pencil factory in Atlanta in 1913. What Conley is singing is his testimony at a trial in which Leo Frank, the northern Jewish factory manager, is being tried on charges that he murdered 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory worker and dumped her body in the basement. Conley is singing a song, a bald-faced lie of a story in which he says he was witnessed to the aftermath of the murder and helped Frank dispose of the body. He sings “That’s What He Said” in friendly, furious fashion, it’s almost a vaudeville tune that gets people going, makes you want to dance, in fact.

Of course, that’s not what you should want to do. You should be appalled, shocked, torn and bewildered by your own feelings, the natural inclination to clap for a show-stopping number at war with the horrible lie being told that will help railroad Frank to the end of a rope.

More important, this is a true thing, a horrible event in post-Civil War southern history that was already replete with regular lynching and murders of blacks during Jim Crow days. Frank, a northerner from Brooklyn, had married a southern Jewish woman named Lucille and moved down South to manage the factory. Mary Phagan was killed on Confederate Memorial Day in Atlanta, which included parades and picnics, a holiday memorial celebrating Confederate valor and the loss of the old South.

“Parade,” which had a run on Broadway under the auspices of producer Harold Prince no less, won a couple of Tonys but not much acclaim. It should get some here, where the story and theme resonate mightily. It’s also been deemed the centerpiece of the programming for the Lincoln Legacy Project and is a co-production with Theater J.

It’s also an often powerful, gut-wrenching hybrid theatrical evening. Unsettling and disjointed, a sharp, thoughtful and creatively staged and performed piece that has some of the aspirations of both a serious opera and the kind of conscience-hitting plays that came from Arthur Miller. But it’s also not exactly what it seems to be, which is a musical. You sometimes think that Uhry and Brown are using the genre to get audiences to interact with the material in unaccustomed ways, the better to make an impact.

History tells us—and it’s no secret to tell the results—that in the end, Frank was convicted on almost totally fabricated, suborned lies and testimony by the victim’s friends, by the janitor and the Franks’ maid, among others, to satisfy the still bitter devotion to the Glorious Cause, a lasting hatred of northerners and blacks by the local Ku Klux Klan, supported by the establishment including a rabid newspaper publisher and author whose next book was going to offer up reasons why Jesus was not a Jew.

The approach doesn’t always work. The casual use of non-traditional casting in having African-American actors be members of crowds celebrating the Confederacy seems somehow altogether wrong, for instance. The music is often stirring, or, in quieter pieces with Frank and his wife, lovely and touching. Then again, songs pop up like period pieces from the times, and then again, you get a piece like “A Rumblin and a Rollin’,” which opens the second act, sung by black servants at a party with almost teeth-bared bitterness, a song that nicely is a bookend to a young Civil War-era soldier singing “The Old Red Hills of Home” setting off for war.

In a large cast, some of whom double and triple up, Euan Morton and Jenny Fellner stand out as Leo and Lucille Frank, who, singing and acting, manage to give a full portrait of a married couple. Often at a distance from each other in the early going they reveal their boundless love for each other in crisis. Will Gartshore is downright scary as an extremist politician and newspaper owner, steely and merciless. Stephen Schmidt as governor, John Slaton and Hugh Dorsey as a solicitor general with political ambitions, effectively define men dealing with their consciences: Slaton finds his; Dorsey misplaces it.

In the end, Slaton, after reviewing trial transcripts, commuted Frank’s death sentence to life, costing him his political future. A mob of KKK types broke into jail and hauled Frank out and lynched him. Frank’s murderers were not brought to justice and Mary Phagan’s killer was never found. Frank was granted a posthumous pardon in 1986, showing again, as if we didn’t know, that the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow.

“Parade” is, I think, a complicated, nuanced work, and the production does it justice and honor. It is not a history lesson, or even a heavy-handed dose of moral lesson. It’s a powerful hybrid that uses the musical theater form as a way of reminding us in disturbing, moving, complicated ways, of how we live today, how far we’ve come, and how issues of tolerance, race, ethnicity, and just plain expressions of out-and-out irrational hatred remain with us. [gallery ids="99240,104014,104018" nav="thumbs"]