Tonight’s performance of Parade, the Broadway musical revival starring Ben Platt as Leo Frank and Micaela Diamond as wife Lucille Frank, was canceled 20 minutes after the scheduled 8 p.m. curtain due to what an announcement said was technical difficulties involving video projections.
The Saturday evening performance was one of several in which critics were invited prior to the Thursday, March 16 opening night. The opening date is not expected to be impacted by tonight’s cancelation.
Performances will resume with the Sunday matinee tomorrow.
The doors at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on W. 45th Street remained closed until just 15 minutes before the scheduled curtain time, giving ticket-holders a briefer than usual 15 minutes to take their seats. The house lights remained on until about 8:20 p.m., with a black-and-white street scene video image projected against the back wall of the stage seemingly frozen.
The much-anticipated Parade revival had drawn a full house tonight, with standing room only audience members lining the lobby area just beyond the orchestra seats.
The production, directed by Michael Arden, drew national headlines last month when neo-Nazi picketers shouted antisemitic slogans at the line of ticket-holders outside, protesting the musical’s sympathetic depiction of Leo Frank, the Jewish man wrongly convicted, and later lynched by a mob, in the 1913 murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan. The protests drew widespread condemnation from, among others, Platt, various theatrical unions and New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The musical, written by Jason Robert Brown (music and lyrics) and Alfred Uhry (book), was first performed in 1998 and won two Tony Awards.