Now Zak is helming the impressive Chicago premiere of "Parade," a 1998 musical by Alfred Uhry ("Driving Miss Daisy") and Jason Robert Brown ("The Last Five Years") that deals with racism in the South -- but with a twist.

African-Americans were the main target of racist hatred in the post-Civil War South, but a strong dislike for Yankees also stirred violence aimed at other minorities. "Parade," a two-time Tony Award winner, is based on one such real-life incident that took place in Atlanta early last century.

The story of Leo Frank, a Brooklyn Jew living in 1913 Atlanta, is essentially one of being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A superintendent at a pencil factory, he was accused of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a worker at the factory. Trying to deter public attention from shameful child labor laws, crooked politicians grasped onto a tradition of racism and anti-Semitism and railroaded the innocent man. Frank was ultimately found guilty and condemned to death. After further investigation, the governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, but an angry mob broke into the jail, grabbed Frank and lynched him.

The trial attracted worldwide attention. Considered a national tragedy by many, it pitted North against South, Jews against gentiles and a rising middle-class against the working poor while also raising questions about the workings of the U.S. legal system.

This is heavy material for a musical, but Uhry and Brown handle it with dignity and intelligence. In the best American musical tradition ("Show Boat," "Ragtime"), Brown's songs are a captivating mix of hymns, folk, blues, jazz and ragtime. Rarely do such songs send a shiver down the spine as these do. The lyrics reveal the explosive depths of a deep-seated racism set deep in the American psyche. It is truly an unsettling experience, one not often felt in musical theater.

"Parade" is an ambitious project for Bailiwick; the stage is just big enough to house the 30-member ensemble. Director Zak wisely pulls back from the spectacle aspect of the musical and instead concentrates on the history lesson and the compelling love story.

Backed by a six-piece band overseen by musical director Alan Bukowiecki, the ensemble performs diligent and touching versions of Brown's emotional songs. A few moments of comic relief stealthily lighten things up.

The musical is framed by Atlanta's Confederate Memorial Day parade. It is on this day that Mary Phagan is found murdered and suspicion quickly falls on Frank. The word "Jew" is spat out like a profanity. This is a society that casts a doubtful eye on anyone who doesn't fit into its way of doing things.

Leo admits that living in Atlanta is like "living in a foreign land"; his wife admonishes him for saying "shalom" instead of "howdy." His biggest crime is a fastidious and neurotic nature that gives him an air of cold aloofness, something this Southern society casts a suspicious eye on.

As played by the talented Nicholas Foster, Leo is a cautious man who simply can't believe anything like this could happen to a forthright citizen who has always taken the right and proper path.

Lucille Frank (a marvelous portrayal by Amy Arbizzani) comes alive in the musical's second half as she successfully attempts to convince the governor to reexamine the evidence in her husband's case. It is here that we begin to see Lucille's transformation from a submissive wife into a strong, resilient woman who will fight to the end for her husband.

In the face of death, the Franks' personal relationship also comes alive as it moves from a staid partnership to one that is rich with love and passion. Rising to her husband's defense, Arbizzani delivers the stirring "You Don't Know This Man." Later, hope becomes palpable in two touching and heartfelt duets -- "This Is Not Over Yet" and "All the Wasted Time" -- performed by the doomed couple.

In solos, duets, trios and ensembles, Brown's music is as important to the storytelling as Uhry's book. Most potent is the disturbing trial segment, in which a series of songs by the witnesses for the prosecution seal Frank's doom.

The ensemble shifts from one scene to the next with ease. In a vaudeville-like number, Sean Reid is a standout as a drunken reporter who has stumbled on the story that could make his career. Other notables are Jamie Axtell as the hard-bitten prosecuting attorney; Randolph Johnson as a sturdy nightwatchman; Brian Daugherty as Mary's accusatory beau, and Amber Robbin as a sweet, playful Mary Phagan.

With its look at the dark undercurrent of racism, "Parade" does not sit lightly on the mind. This is tough material that takes a certain nerve to produce. Zak and company give it just the right touch, proving that musical theater can tell a challenging story with grace and heart.

Those of us who admired this rich, dark, bold, tuneful and intensely complex new musical after its troubled Lincoln Center premiere thus had to schlep all the way to Green Bay to see it. With composer-lyricist Brown in the pit and most of the initial New York problems gloriously solved, the drive to Wisconsin was entirely worthwhile. This week at the Bailiwick Arts Center � which has never lacked ambition �"Parade" gets its long-overdue first resident Chicago production.

Bailiwick operates on relatively small budgets and draws from a non-Equity pool. And David Zak's production is by no means flawless. The show's inherent seriousness sometimes get overwrought by cartoonish tableaux on Eric Appleton's Day-Glo set. And a folksy concept keeping the 30-strong cast often on stage comes at a price: The townspeople and bystanders get stuck in a variety of awkward clumps.

For better or worse, Zak cannot quite resist the temptation to turn this carefully nuanced and shaded show into a broad indictment of the conservative south � and his Confederacy-loving villains often shout and scream with too much excitement for verisimilitude.

But especially for lovers of contemporary musicals who'd rather drop $30 than $80, these issues do not constitute reasons to pass this show by.

Directed with passion and daring, it is very skillfully cast. There is a stellar little orchestra providing the musical accompaniment. The show is capably sung across the board and, on occasion, the vocals are exceptional. And most important, the married couple at the center of the story of a trumped-up murder case born of anti-Semitism is very well played.

In the introspective, self-tortured lead role, the young but immensely capable Nicholas Foster offers a moving and truthful performance, deftly matched by the powerful vocals of Amy Arbizzani in the role of Mrs. Frank. When one adds a delightfully cynical piece of work from the terrific Sean Reid as a newsman who sees everyone's hypocrisy except his own, that's a surfeit of stellar work.

Brown made few concessions to commercial viability. But "Parade" is a far better and far more important show than many people realize. The admirable Bailiwick version makes that perfectly clear.

Parade is an ambitiously difficult show to produce requiring a cast of 30 performers, a vivid set using the entire stage and needing outstanding musical arrangements. David Zak, together with the talented Alan Bukowiecki and the fine choreography from Brenda Didier, has accomplished a miracle: producing a fabulous major musical on a small budget without Equity actors on a small stage with only six musicians. Parade is an elegant, heart-wrenching show in the finest American tradition of a Showboat or a Ragtime. Bailiwick�s Parade is a major achievement with stunning power that will move you unlike any musical in recent memory.

Parade is the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was wrongly convicted of the murder of thirteen-year old Mary Phagan. The musical covers not only the trial, but also dramatizes the love story between Leo and his wife Lucille.The show is basically an historical retelling of the story, but it also subtly examines class and race relations, prejudice, and the South. In the end, Leo's sentence is commuted from the death sentence to life imprisonment, but on the two-year anniversary of the little girls death, a mob takes him from his cell and lynches him.

Composer-lyricist Brown makes an impressive Broadway debut with some achingly beautiful songs - "Old Red Hills of Home," a stirring anthem of Southern pride; and "You Don't Know This Man," Lucille's defiant defense of her husband.

Uhry�s Frank is not a perfect martyr but an arrogant Atlanta newcomer who yearns for the "real people" of his Brooklyn youth. Another bold choice is to begin the evening with a noble young Rebel soldier going off to war - then magically transform him into a bitter, grizzled, one-legged veteran in the Confederate Memorial Day Parade (hence the show's title) 35 years later. In this single brilliant stroke, Uhry provides a sympathetic insight into the men who shouted for the head of the Yankee foreman who paid their children pennies an hour.

Thus Uhry shifts the blame off the common man and onto Tom Watson(Steve Best), the publisher of "The Jeffersonian," who incites him with such verbatim phrases as "perverted sodomite Jew." Uhry also includes a stereotypically clownish defense lawyer, a sort of Big Daddy without the brains.

His least credible characters are lesser villains: prosecutor Hugh Dorsey, who exploits the Frank case with naked political ambition; and Britt Craig, reporter for the now-defunct Atlanta Georgian, a generic figure of journalistic sleaze who seems to arise from the opportunity rather than a sense of deep historical outrage.

Parade is simply too riveting in its authentic horrors and too intelligently told. Uhry's book has an uncanny ability to weave in and out of characters' heads, making fantasy coexist with reality; even the choreography by Brenda Didier enhances this effect.

In the evening's most daring sequence, as factory girls give coached testimony about Frank's alleged lasciviousness, the repressed superintendent dances with them with a mad, suggestive abandon, even leaping up to strut across courtroom desks.

But the evening's transcendent moment has nothing to do with tragedy - it's about fleeting, quiet joy, as Leo and Lucille enjoy their long-awaited "picnic�. In Brown's most soaring notes and inspired lyrics (fully realized by the voices of the superb Nicholas Foster and Amy Arbizzani), the Franks come to terms with "All the Wasted Time" that they neglected to enjoy each other, just hours before the vigilantes seize him.

Parade is a somber, gripping beauty of a show; the kind musical theater fans will relish and wish to see more than once. Because Parade is ambitious and sets the story of its two central characters against a larger social canvas, it may take some patience from the audience.

The emotional heart of the show, what we come to care about most, is the relationship between Leo and wife Lucille: As Lucille fights for justice for her husband, she changes from a docile Southern belle to a figure of strength. And an arranged, somewhat distant and sterile marriage is transformed, husband and wife falling in love for the first time as a result of what they have endured in the two years following Mary's murder.

Parade features Jason Robert Brown�s amazing assortment of ballads, comedy songs and anthems using a wide range of styles from period (early 1900�s) music to ragtime to contemporary pop forming a distinct �southern� sound. This score was sung with emotional fervor as Brannnen Daugherty (Frankie Epps), Sean Reid, as the drunken reporter, Britt, Reid lands the terrific songs deftly. Rich performances from Jamie Axtell as the nasty prosecutor Hugh Dorsey, Ronnie Duncan as Jim Conley and Steve Kimbrough as Governor Slaton enhance the production. The ensemble had a collective effect that drove home much of the emotions of the show.

Parade�s finest moments came from Nicholas Foster as Leo Frank. Foster sang and exuded the fear and bewilderment Frank surely felt. His songs hit us in the heart. Amy Arbizzani sang and portrayed Lucille Frank with an understated dignity and her powerful voice sent her songs into out souls.

Parade is the saddest musical ever in the tradition of a Greek tragedy. Parade�s integrity is haunting, as it never loses its purpose or its focus on justice, racism, anti-Semitism as it demonstrates the potential of the masses to violence.

Thank God, Chicago finally gets to see this wonderful show. Parade is a somber gripping gorgeous show that will leave you relishing its power and beckoning you to see it again. All the best musicals have that influence. See this show soon.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws