Stuart Matthew Price

Yesterday five of us went to see "Parade" at the Donmar in London. Four of us are retired and the fifth was Kitten, who took a day off work. "Parade" is a musical by Jason Robert Brown, who I rate quite highly as his work is in the Spielberg mode of controversial subject matter allied with intelligent music. I bought the CD years ago in "Dress Circle" in Monmouth Street and therefore leaped at the chance to see and hear the musical at my favourite London theatre.

The musical is based on a true factual story. On Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, a 13 year old child labourer named Mary Phagan was strangled to death in the Atlanta, Georgia, pencil factory where she worked. The chief suspect was Leo Frank, a Yankee Jew, who worked as the plant superintendent. Alfred Uhry, who wrote the book for the musical, is a native Atlantan.

The District Attorney, with political ambitions to replace the state governor, decides against charging a black suspect and decides top stage a showcase trial against the Jewish Yankee.

Bertie Carvel playing Leo Frank presents us with a cold and unfeeling character, who deliberately keeps our sympathies at bay. In the showcase trial he is beset by the state's star witness, Jim Conley (powerfully sung by Shaun Escoffery), who avoids suspicion falling upon himself by helping the district attorney build up a case against the Jewish outsider. We never learn who killed Mary Phagan and it indeed could have been Leo Frank. However the trial is so obviously biased and based on circumstantial evidence that our sympathy is won over to the defendant, not because we like him any more but because we can see how stacked how the dice being rolled against him. The memorable moment of the first half is "It's Hard to Speak My Heart", which is Leo Frank's closing testimony to the jury (In Georgian state law the defendant is not cross-examined but can make a closing testimony if so wished). He sings it primarily to his Georgian born wife, Lucille Frank, and is a wonderfully moving solo delivered impeccably by Bertie Carvel. Leo Frank is extremely nervous, aloof from Atlantan society, and externally cold and unfeeling. The song lets us inside this carapace but without ever selling out the characterisation. The trial ends with a death sentence and a triumphant barn dance as the citizens of Atlanta celebrate the decision. We ate our interval ice creams in muted silence pondering the fate of Leo Frank.

In the second half we see the relationship between Leo and Lucille grow to full fruition and she becomes a major campaigner in the battle to get the sentence commuted to life imprisonment rather than death. She is backed by the chief rabbi of the Atlantan synagogue, who travels to New York to enlist Yankee help in fighting the Frank case. Lara Pulver (who we last saw in Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five Years" at the Menier last year) and Bertie Carvel sing the love duet, "All the Wasted Time", which is a bitter sweet reminiscence of the missed opportunities in their marriage and lives up to that point. The heart strings are tugged and Leo Frank has become someone with whom the audience have a greater understanding. The sentence becomes life imprisonment and the campaign moves on to the next phase of trying to secure his release. However dark forces are at work in Atlanta led by bible thumping minister Tom Watson (Norman Bowman, last seen as Billie Bigelow in "Carousel" at Chichester last year) and the musical ends in a gut wrenching finale.

We were surprised that the first person we saw and heard on stage was Stuart Matthew Price, a good looking blonde slender high tenor with a great voice and look. Our surprise was that we knew Stuart from Bedhampton and his parents Bill and Shelley were Methodists at the Hulbert Road Church when I was senior steward there. Ingrid had taught Stuart at Bidbury Junior as his talent shone from an early age in school musicals. Alice knew him from Sunday School. We knew he had been with the Musical Youth Theatre and had chosen to make the stage his profession. He was a knockout in "Parade" and it was a real delight to talk with him after the show in the Donmar foyer. Young Stuart also writes musicals and won the Stoll Moss Theatres Award for Most Promising Under 18s Musical Writer. I think Stuart will do well as both performer and as a writer in the profession he has chosen.

The standards at the Donmar are excellent and "Parade" joins the pantheon of outstanding productions seen there. I can't wait now for Natty Chap's thirtieth birthday, when we are all going to see "Othello" at the Donmar, with another young and up and coming actor playing Iago, one Ewan McGregor.