Weekly Kibbitz
B roadway’s Jewish golden boy is set to play one
of the most infamous victims of antisemitism in
American history.

“Dear Evan Hansen” star Ben Platt will star as Leo
Frank in a new revival of the 1998 Broadway musical
“Parade,” a dramatization of Frank’s 1915 lynching
at the hands of a gang of white Southerners. The
show will have a limited run Nov. 1-6 at the New York
City Center as its annual gala presentation.

Frank was a pencil factory manager in Atlanta
who was tried and sentenced to death, on spe-
cious evidence, of assaulting and murdering a
teenaged factory worker in 1913. The case of
“Little Mary Phagan” became national tabloid
fodder as, unusually for the time, an all-white jury
accepted the testimony of a Black man who iden-
tified Frank as the perpetrator and portrayed him
as a sexual pervert. Numerous elements of the
trial had antisemitic connotations, including the
fact that one jury member was overheard saying,
“I’ll hang that Jew for sure.”
The story had many dramatic twists and turns.

Frank made numerous appeals to higher courts,
all of which were rejected, but the governor
of Georgia unexpectedly commuted his sen-
tence to life in prison. Then a mob of men,
several of whom would go on to become prom-
inent politicians in the state, broke into the
prison hospital where Frank was held and lynched
him in Marietta, Georgia — Phagan’s hometown.

Frank’s case was cited in 1913, the year of his
trial, in the formation of the Anti-Defamation
League. An effort to posthumously pardon Frank in the
1980s based on new evidence ultimately proved
unsuccessful, but in 2019 the local district attorney
announced he would formally reopen the case in
an effort to clear his name. Some followers of the
case, including descendants of Phagan, continue Ben Platt attends an event at 92Y in New York City,
May 9, 2022.

to believe in Frank’s guilt. His story is also chroni-
cled in author Steve Oney’s 2003 book “And The
Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and Michael Arden, who was raised Southern Baptist
the Lynching of Leo Frank.”
and attended an Episcopal school, also helmed
The new production of “Parade” promises it will an acclaimed 2016 revival of “Spring Awakening”
be “a true-crime version” of the musical, which performed simultaneously by deaf and hearing
was originally written by Jason Robert Brown actors. The new production will incorporate real-
and Alfred Uhry (whose great-uncle owned the life photographs from the Frank trial.

pencil factory where Frank worked). Director
— Andrew Lapin
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Ben Platt to Play Jewish Lynching Victim Leo
Frank in a Revival of Broadway Musical ‘Parade’