When the Tony Award-winning “Parade” first played the Fox Theatre 25 years ago this summer, the musical by Atlanta native Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown depicting the 1913 murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan at the National Pencil Factory in downtown Atlanta felt like both a cautionary tale and a powerful history lesson. Tuesday night’s return of the 2023 Tony-winning Best Revival’s national tour at the Fox felt ripped from yesterday’s front pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post. Or, perhaps your new preferred Substack news equivalent, given that both of those traditional news organizations are currently hemorrhaging readers, due to recent editorial decisions regarding coverage of our 47^th president.

Anti-Semitism, white supremacy, race, socioeconomic inequities, class, rampant misinformation, lying under oath and political corruption are all center stage as the musical tells the story of Leo Frank. Played by Max Chernin, Frank is a Brooklyn-raised Jewish businessman who moves to Atlanta with his Southern-born wife Lucille (Talia Suskauer) to work as the supervisor at the factory. “Parade” focuses most of its two acts on Frank’s subsequent arrest, trial, imprisonment for Phagan’s death and its tragic aftermath. Using archival photographs throughout the staging of the show, somehow lends even more of an emotional gut punch to the story.

The importance of retelling this story now in the era of Charlottesville, mass migrant deportations, convicted felons being elected president and the long-term effects of Fox News wallpaper in American living rooms was underscored by what happened Tuesday night at the Fox Theatre before the show even started. The pre-recorded voice of U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) welcoming the audience and reminding them to turn off their cellphones triggered a male member of the opening night crowd to immediately begin shouting about “bathrooms.”

Two and a half hours later, a clearly moved “Parade” ensemble received a standing ovation for bringing the tragic story of Leo Frank home to Atlanta, 1.7 miles from where it was birthed at 37-41 South Forsyth Street. “We are so overwhelmed and honored to be bringing this story to Atlanta,” Talia Suskauer, who plays Lucille Frank, told the crowd. “This is a special night we will never forget.”

Before the show’s opening night in Atlanta, Eldredge ATL spoke with “Parade” actor Michael Tacconi, who brings the ethically dubious Atlanta newspaper reporter Britt Craig to life onstage each night. While the name of the paper is changed in the show, in 1913, Craig was a young Atlanta Constitution reporter who helped drive community obsession with the Phagan murder with his increasingly salacious front page stories on the case focusing on Frank’s arrest and trial.

Q: Given the realities of 2025, can you talk a bit about what doing this show each night feels like for you and the cast?

A: On the surface, it’s nice to be doing something so well-crafted. One of the best things about the show is Alfred’s book. He’s so succinct. There’s no fluff, no flowery dialogue. The characters say what needs to be said and move on. It’s nice to be working on something that’s so artistically fulfilling and also historical. It’s not every day you get an acting job where the content is so meaningful and pointed. This is a story where we see people in all of their flaws and all of their messiness. And then, how that affects others and how that fits into the context of the time they’re in. It feels very appropriate for the time we’re living in.

Q: At what point did you dig into your character and realize Britt Craig was a real reporter at the Atlanta Constitution?

A: I knew the show mostly from the score when I was in acting school. But it wasn’t until three or four months before I got cast that I had a chance to do some Googling. Then on our first day of rehearsal, they give us a nice fat dramaturgy package where everyone has a blurb about our characters, when they’re born, when they passed away, their career, their involvement in the trial and in my case, some of their moral failings.

Q: Britt Craig has this number in the first act, “Real Big News” that kind of sets the table for everything that’s coming. What’s that like to do every night, especially in our current age of disinformation?

A: It’s taken me a minute to actually build up the stamina to be singing it while running around, jumping up and down on tables and doing what I want to be doing with it. I like being very physical as an actor and how that forces you to show things with your body and not just your voice. I really seize the opportunity to physically embody this guy’s excitement and his new lease on life as he gets to be the bearer of this news story. But also, it’s about the press. How we get our information and who is giving us our information. We all want to be able to trust our news sources and now because we can’t trust one news source, it places a seed of doubt into everything we read and everything we see online. Historically, Britt was known for embellishing on the facts. He was known for not being the best journalist but for being a guy who could write a story salacious enough so people would buy the newspaper. It’s not a great trait but it’s fun to play. That feels a lot like what we’re experiencing today. I look at my Apple News headlines and sometimes I just laugh at the clickbait headlines. It could be something you’re not even interested in, but the headlines reel you in. I feel that with Britt too. [‘Real Big News’] is a great example of that — where he’s just spewing the most salacious stuff in order to rile up the crowd.

Q: I’m thinking you have to form some bonds doing material like this on stage each night. What’s the cast dynamic like for “Parade”?

A: The level of respect and care for each other is pretty extraordinary. We’re pretty much all onstage for most of the show. That can be exhausting because you don’t want to have to watch this story every night and to hear the horrible things that are said and to see a tragedy every night. But there’s something about doing it together. We all kind of sign up for it when we step out on stage every night. We’re there with each other and it really does form a bond.

Q: In a January, Alfred Uhry, who is now 88, gave an interview where he discussed the differences between staging this originally in the late 1990s during the Clinton administration and now. He said, “Sadly, the times caught up with the material.” What’s that like as a member of the cast taking the weight of that on stage?

A:  My hope is that people seeing it, as much as I hate to say it, I hope it hits them square in the face. I hope it says, ‘Hey, if this is the direction we’re going as a community or as a country or myself as an individual, if I’m letting my empathy or my ability to see my neighbor wholly, if I’m letting that light dim, then my hope is that this show really turns that light back on for people. This show is about how quickly one rumor can send you down a path that is truly tragic. I hope people seeing the show find it as powerful as you and I feel it is.

Q: Has the cast discussed the impact of playing this material in the city where these events occurred?

A: We’ve been talking about it since the tour started. We couldn’t wait to get to Atlanta. Also, the Fox is the biggest theatre we’re playing on this tour so it feels fitting that we’re going to have our homecoming there with the biggest crowds and with the community where the material should resonate most actively. We’re very curious about how some of the lines about Atlanta land in Atlanta and how much the audience wants to examine themselves or laugh at themselves. We’re excited but we also realize we’re bringing this really hard story back to the community where it was born. But we’re ready. Our hope is people receive it in a beautiful and artistic way and in a way that touches them.

The 2025 U.S. Tour of “Parade,” a musical with book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown plays Atlanta’s Fox Theatre through Sunday, April 6. For more information and tickets, visit the official Fox Theatre website.

Richard L. Eldredge

Richard L. Eldredge is the founder and editor in chief of Eldredge ATL. As a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Atlanta magazine, he has covered Atlanta since 1990.