Jenny Fellner is taking a break from the Broadway run of “Wicked” to portray Lucille Frank in “Parade” at Ford’s Theatre opposite Tony nominee Euan Morton as her husband, Leo Frank. Her role in the Tony-winning musical based on the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank is in stark contrast to her turn as the make-believe Nessarose, the Wicked Witch of the East. Convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old employee, Frank was given life imprisonment by the governor of Georgia, but during his transfer to a prison in Milledgeville, a lynching party kidnapped and hanged him. The historic event is revisited in the music and lyrics of Jason Robert Brown and the book by Alfred Uhry, whose great-uncle owned the factory.
Throughout much of her career, Fellner has played the predictable ingenue roles in such musicals as “Pal Joey,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Boyfriend” and “Mamma Mia!” On TV, she has been seen on “Law & Order: SVU.” Except for the title role in “Lizzie Borden,” she has interpreted fictitious characters.
Onstage |
‘Parade’ |
Where: Ford’s Theatre |
When: Through Oct. 30 |
Info: $27.29 to $40.50; ticketmaster.com |
“It’s nice to play a woman and a wife who is independent, not a daughter who is weak or a sad sack,” she said. “I didn’t know about this historical event, so I studied ‘And the Dead Shall Rise’ by Steve Oney and other books for research. There’s a wealth of information on the Internet, but much of it is one-sided and hard to put together. This show emphasizes Frank’s wife’s belief in him 100 percent. It’s a masterpiece.
“There are times when I almost can’t go on, but I need to keep it together to sing a song. Even though it takes a huge toll emotionally, this is a story that needs to be told. Lucille is strong and does things not expected of her. Instead of moving from Atlanta after Leo was lynched, she remained there for the next 60 years of her life so people were forced to see her on the street daily. She always signed her name Mrs. Leo Frank.”
Fellner thinks often about the contrasting stories of Leo and Lucille Frank and Lizzie Borden. The more she researches the facts behind “Parade,” the more convinced she is of Frank’s innocence. The reverse is true of Borden, who was found not guilty by the jury, despite the photographs available of her parents soon after they were killed by an axe.
“It’s shocking to me that the verdicts were reversed,” she said. “I love exploring unique characters and discovering what was in their minds. In the past five years, I’ve appeared in a musical about 9/11, one about incest and now ‘Parade,’ about the possible miscarriage of justice. I wake up wishing I could do something about the outcome, but of course nothing can change because it’s all in the past.”