Tag Archives: Howard McGillin

PARADE

Lucille (Micaela Diamond) and Leo Frank (Ben Platt) fight for justice in Parade (photo by Joan Marcus)

PARADE
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 6, $84-$288
paradebroadway.com

At intermission of the first Broadway revival of Parade, based on a true story of anti-Semitism, racism, and a terrible miscarriage of justice, several colleagues and I asked the same question: “Why is this a musical?” We found out in the far superior second act.

The show, directed by Harold Prince, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy), debuted at the Vivian Beaumont in 1998, running for thirty-nine previews and eighty-four regular performances, earning nine Tony nominations and winning for Best Book and Best Original Score. It is now playing at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, in a version directed by Tony winner Michael Arden that transferred from Encores! at City Center and uses the 2007 Donmar Warehouse production, which included a few different songs from the original.

Parade begins with a prologue set in Marietta, Georgia, in 1862, as a young Confederate soldier (Charlie Webb) sings goodbye to his love and prepares to fight “for these old hills behind me / these old red hills of home. . . . in the land where honor lives and breathes.” The action then shifts to Atlanta in 1913, where the soldier (Howard McGillin), who lost a leg in the Civil War, is determined to help the South rise again, “honor” be damned.

It’s Confederate Memorial Day, and Lucille Frank (Micaela Diamond) wants to go on a picnic with her husband, Leo (Ben Platt), but he instead decides to go to work at the National Pencil Company, her father’s factory where Leo is superintendent. Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) arrives to collect her pay and is later found murdered in the basement. The police arrest Leo for the crime, but he doesn’t take them very seriously, since he is innocent — but when power-hungry district attorney Hugh Dorsey (Paul Alexander Nolan) starts building a strong case against him, constructed on a series of lies, Leo suddenly faces reality as Lucille seeks to uncover the truth and reveal the conspiracy to railroad her husband.

Mary Phagan (Erin Rose Doyle) enjoys one final moment of life with Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen) in based-on-fact musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Among those participating in the frame-up led by Dorsey are National Pencil night watchman Newt Lee (Eddie Cooper), janitor Jim Conley (Alex Joseph Grayson), and Frank family maid Minnie McKnight (Danielle Lee Greaves), all of whom are Black and manipulated because of the color of their skin; Governor Jack Slaton (Sean Allan Krill), who is more concerned with his upcoming reelection campaign than the fate of one perhaps innocent man; Mary’s friend Frankie Epps (Jake Pedersen), who wants to see the murderer “burn in the ragin’ fires of hell forevermore”; right-wing newspaper editor and publisher Tom Watson (Manoel Felciano), who calls out, “Who’s gonna stop the Jew from killin’? Who’s gonna swing that hammer?”; Judge Roan (McGillin), who’d rather be fishing than in court; and Britt Craig (Jay Armstrong Johnson), an ambitious reporter who declares, “Take this superstitious city / Add one little Jew from Brooklyn / Plus a college education and a mousy little wife / And big news! Real big news! / That poor sucker saved my life!” Mary’s distraught mother (Kelli Barrett) is the only one considering forgiveness.

The focus of the show shifts dramatically after intermission, during which Leo remains onstage, in his jail cell, contemplating his fate; while the first act was all over the place, squeezing in too much information alongside oversized production numbers, the second act zeroes in on the touching relationship between Lucille and Leo as they desperately try to prove his innocence. It’s a beautiful, romantic love story, highlighted by a prison picnic Lucille brings to Leo in which she first chastises him for not accepting her assistance. “Do it alone, Leo — do it all by yourself. / You’re the only one who matters after all. / Do it alone, Leo — why should it bother me? / I’m just good for standing in the shadows / And staring at the walls, Leo,” she sings. Later they duet on “This Is Not Over Yet,” as Leo proclaims, “Hail the resurrection of / the south’s least fav’rite son! / It means I made a vow for better! / Two is better than one! / It means the journey ahead might get shorter. / I might reach the end of my rope! / But suddenly, loud as a mortar, there is hope!”

Parade features archival projections throughout (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dane Laffrey’s set is centered by a large wooden platform on which most of the action takes place, evoking a gallows as well as a coffin. There are scattered chairs and pews on either side, where many of the characters sit when they’re not in the scene, which can get confusing, especially for actors who play multiple roles. Susan Hilferty’s period costumes put us right in the 1910s, while Sven Ortel’s projections feature archival photographs of the real people and locations involved in the story, along with newspaper articles and a memorial plaque, a constant, and effective, reminder that this really happened — along with a final shot providing one last shock. Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant’s choreography thankfully calms down in the second half. Heather Gilbert’s lighting and Jon Weston’s sound maintains the dark mood surrounding the events. Music director and conductor Tom Murray handles three-time Tony winner Brown’s (The Last Five Years, Mr. Saturday Night) compelling score with a rousing touch, while director Michael Arden (Spring Awakening, Once on This Island) ably navigates through Uhry’s (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo) busy book. (Notably, Atlanta native Uhry’s great-uncle owned the National Pencil Company at the time of the killing.)

Tony winner Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormon) and Diamond (The Cher Show, A Play Is a Poem) are wonderful together, portraying a Jewish couple in the Deep South facing bigotry; Platt captures Leo’s unrealistic belief that justice will triumph in the end, while Diamond embodies Lucille’s growth as she confronts what is happening in her beloved hometown. Grayson (Into the Woods, Girl from the North Country) brings down the house with “Feel the Rain Fall,” although, in 2023, it teeters on the edge of appropriation. Courtnee Carter (Once on This Island, Sing Street) as Angela and Douglas Lyons (Chicken & Biscuits, Beautiful) as Riley provide necessary perspective in their duet, “A Rumblin’ and a Rollin’,” in which they assert, “I can tell you this, as a matter of fact, / that the local hotels wouldn’t be so packed / if a little black girl had gotten attacked.” Also providing strong support are Cooper (Assassins, The Cradle Will Rock), Tony nominee Krill (Jagged Little Pill, Honeymoon in Vegas), and Greaves (Hairspray, Rent).

The final projection as the musical ends is a potent reminder that this country still has a long way to go when it comes to entrenched racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, in states such as Georgia and too many others that appear determined to continue a legacy of bigotry and hatred, although there is hope with such political stalwarts as Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, the reverend who tells us, before the show starts, to silence our cellphones but, implicitly, not our voices.

PLAYS IN THE HOUSE: THE CONFESSION OF LILY DARE

The cast of Charles Busch’s The Confessions of Lily Dare will reunite for one-time-only livestreamed benefit reading on May 13 (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Who: Nancy Anderson, Christopher Borg, Charles Busch, Howard McGillin, Kendal Sparks, Jennifer Van Dyck
What: One-time-only livestream reading benefiting the Actors Fund
Where: Stars in the House Facebook page
When: Wednesday, May 13, free (donations accepted), 2:00
Why: Plays in the House is an offshoot of Stars in the House, which is livestreaming discussions, cast reunions, and play readings to benefit the Actors Fund. Among the plays they’ve previously brought back are The Heidi Chronicles (original 1989 cast), Fully Committed, Blithe Spirit, and Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. The packed two-a-day schedule continues May 13 at 2:00 with Busch’s The Confession of Lily Dare. When it ran at the Cherry Lane a few months ago, I called it “a sinfully seductive treat” and wrote that “Busch is at his diva best as Lily, all dolled up in outrageously funny costumes by Jessica Jahn and wigs by Katherine Carr.” At the reading, the original cast, which features Nancy Anderson, Christopher Borg, Howard McGillin, Kendal Sparks, Jennifer Van Dyck, and Busch, will appear from wherever they’re sheltering in place, so it should be interesting to see how the actors and director Carl Andress deal with that aspect of the work, so central to Busch’s oeuvre. Up next for Plays in the House is Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days on May 16 with Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, the husband-and-wife duo who appeared in Andrei Belgrader’s 2015 production at the Flea.

THE CONFESSION OF LILY DARE

Lily Dare (Charles Busch) enchants everyone around her in homage to 1930s pre-Code confession films (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 5, $82-$152
212-989-2020
primarystages.org
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Writer, actor, and downtown drag icon Charles Busch pays homage to pre-Code melodramas about women done wrong in The Confession of Lily Dare, a sinfully seductive treat that continues at the Cherry Lane through March 5. Honoring such films as San Francisco, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, Frisco Jenny, and Madame X with a healthy dose of Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, and even Hayley Mills, the play is told in flashback, beginning in 1950 when former prostitute and oft-married Emmy Lou (Nancy Anderson) and piano player Mickey (Kendal Sparks) are at the grave of their old friend Lily Dare. “Nobody can say this boneyard isn’t deluxe,” Emmy Lou says. “Lil, how in blazes did a Sawdust Gal get to lie down with the upper crust? And howja finagle the grand tombstone? You should see the stone carving. It’s gorgeous . . . just like you.” The action then shifts back to 1906 and the story begins, revealing just how Lily managed to be buried in the ritzy section of the cemetery. The journey recalls such classic flashback noirs as Citizen Kane, DOA, The Killers, and Double Indemnity, just a whole lot funnier.

Following the death of her mother, darling little Lily (Busch) arrives at the doorstep of her aunt Rosalie Mackintosh (a riotous Jennifer Van Dyck), who runs a successful Barbary Coast brothel. Lily had been in a fine convent school in Switzerland, where she learned four languages, but now, at sixteen, she’s broke with nowhere else to go. The tough-talking Rosalie is not exactly thrilled that Lily is there, but she decides to take her in nevertheless, at least temporarily. Everybody who meets Lily is instantly captive to her charm, from penniless bookkeeper Louis Markham (Christopher Borg) to dapper whorehouse regular Blackie Lambert (Howard McGillin), who tells Lily, “I’m what is known as a shady character from a once prominent family who adds a veneer of class to whatever room he’s in.” Lily wants to be a singer, but her dreams are curtailed by the San Francisco earthquake, a pregnancy, and a stint in the hoosegow, after which she follows in her aunt’s footsteps, all the while keeping track from afar of the daughter she had to give up.

A baroness (Jennifer Van Dyck) and a baron (Christopher Borg) have their eyes on Lily (Charles Busch) in Primary Stages production at the Cherry Lane (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Busch is at his diva best as Lily, all dolled up in outrageously funny costumes by Jessica Jahn and wigs by Katherine Carr. (Rachel Townsend designed the duds for the rest of the cast.) Busch has never met a double (or single) entendre he didn’t like, and Confession is full of them, along with lots of zany, tongue-in-cheek knowing glances. It’s more than mere parody, instead infused with a passion and an adulation that permeate every scene, immersing the audience in its several atmospheric genres. Anderson is utterly charming as the squeaky-voiced hooker with a heart of gold, Sparks is sweet as the innocent Mickey (who wants to write “The Bordello Symphony in four movements: the Madame, the Stoolie, the Flatfoot, the Stooge”), and McGillin is appropriately smarmy as the devilish Blackie, but Borg and Van Dyck (in her ninth Busch collaboration) nearly steal the show as a series of fab characters, from a baron and baroness to a doctor and his wife to an opera impresario and his soprano protégée. Van Dyck is so sensational that the audience is all atwitter each time she merely enters as a new character, our expectations soaring and wholly satisfied.

Director Carl Andress (The Tribute Artist, The Divine Sister), who has been working with Busch since 1997, keeps the slapstick coming, along with some genuinely touching moments; as beautifully bawdy as the dialogue is (“Somehow or other, we got by. There’s always work to be found for a piano player who knows ragtime and a hooker who does anal,” Mickey says. “These new-fangled tarts have one customer and then put a ‘Closed for Renovation’ sign on their privates,” Rosalie complains.), the actors’ delivery rockets it into another stratosphere, each character having a distinctly hilarious method of speaking. The way lines are said is often as important as the words themselves, which is central to both high and low camp. Longtime Busch set designer B. T. Whitehill adds lovely romantic flourishes to the stage, incorporating the Golden Gate Bridge and numerous cute no-budget details.

Busch (The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom) has spent much of the last ten years staging short-run plays at Theater for a New City, quickie productions with no press and featuring his friends; when Primary Stages asked him to participate in the company’s thirty-fifth anniversary season, he decided to bring back Confession, which played at TNC in 2018. It’s a terrific choice, as he gets to vamp it up all he can in a work that has semiautobiographical elements, perhaps giving him an extra shot of fervency; Busch’s mother passed away when he was seven and he was sent to live with his aunt, but not in a brothel. Though it’s not quite The Confession of Charles Busch, you don’t have to get the many cinematic references to love Busch and Confession, a fab show with plenty of kitschy melodrama to spare.

GIGI

Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 21, $67-$147
gigionbroadway.com

In the Oscar-winning title song of Gigi, Gaston Lachaille asks, “When did your sparkle turn to fire / and your warmth become desire?” In the new Broadway revival at the Neil Simon Theatre, there is plenty of sparkle and warmth, but little fire and desire, making for a perfectly pleasant evening that never quite hits the high notes of this story of love and extravagance in fin de siècle Paris. Gigi began life as a 1944 novella by Colette, which was turned into a 1949 French comedy starring Danièle Delorme as the sixteen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood. It then became a Broadway hit written by Anita Loos in 1951 and starring Audrey Hepburn, followed by Vincente Minnelli’s smash 1958 Lerner and Loewe musical, which was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, and won them all. Twenty-five years later it was turned into a Broadway musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music) that won a Tony for Best Score but failed to catch on with the public. Which brings us to the current, first-ever Broadway revival, a modestly entertaining if not exactly illuminating version adapted by British screenwriter and playwright Heidi Thomas (Cranford, Call the Midwife), who has scrubbed clean this tale of accepted high-society prostitution, significantly lessening the age difference between the main characters, Gigi and Gaston, portrayed by former Disney stars Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) and Corey Cott (Newsies), respectively. In fact, Hudgens is fifteen months older than Cott; in comparison, ten years separated Leslie Caron and the older Louis Jourdan in the movie musical. In addition, the signature song, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” is no longer sung by Gaston’s uncle, Honoré, who was most famously played by Maurice Chevalier, but instead by Gigi’s grandmother, Mme. (Mamita) Alvarez (Victoria Clark), and great-aunt, Alicia (Dee Hoty), completely eliminating any hint of lewdness. As far as the plot goes, Gaston is a very wealthy steampunk bon vivant who dreams of flying. He is experiencing problems with his mistress, Liane d’Exelmans (Steffanie Leigh), and might soon be in search of his next lover, which excites Aunt Alicia, who has been grooming Gigi to prepare her to become a gentleman’s courtesan, one of the class of Parisian women who get rewarded handsomely for their “services.” The idealistic Gigi might not be all about girl power, but she still believes she can make her own choices, setting up the major conflict of the show.

Gigi has a delightful score, featuring such memorable songs as “The Parisians,” “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” and “The Night They Invented Champagne.” Hudgens sings and dances well, although she strains at overpronouncing her “t”s in dialogue. Hoty (Footloose, The Will Rogers Follies) overplays Aunt Alicia; the scenes in which she trains Gigi in the art of being a mistress fall flat. Former Phantom of the Opera McGillin is fine as Honoré, delivering a lovely “I Remember It Well” with Clark (The Light in the Piazza, Cinderella), who is the strongest part of the show. The weakest is Cott, who lacks the charm and elegance necessary for the role of the man every woman in Paris wants; the program lists his only experience other than Newsies as university productions, so he might need more time to blossom. Derek McLane’s flashy set is structured around the base of the Eiffel Tower as it changes from posh nightclub to fashionable beach resort to Mamita’s and Alicia’s very different living quarters. Director Eric Schaeffer (Follies, Million Dollar Quartet) never really achieves a flow to the narrative, resulting in a bumpy progression of set pieces. It might never all quite gel, and the production magnifies the dated nature of the central story, but it still makes for a nice show. It’s not a bore, but you might not remember it very well either.