PARADE back in New York City — Page 2

In the original production, Minnie's testimony did not exist. It wasn't until the London production where Minnie became part of the plot. The London production also saw the scaled down orchestrations, the removal of PEOPLE OF ATLANTA and BIG NEWS, and the addition of HAMMER OF JUSTICE. All of which, I think, did a disservice to the score.

Updated On: 7/17/17 at 10:40 AM

I forgot that this thread was posted on both boards. This was my response to seeing this production last month:

It's a great regional production and a wonderful cast. The new Writers Theatre building is gorgeous and rivals Steppenwolf and Goodman. I hope they can attract a lot of city folk out to their shows (though the Metra train schedule isn't great, we had over two hour wait for train back to the city after the show). This production could still use some cleaning/tightening up of a few scenes in staging and choreography, but it is quite strong and hits all the right emotional notes. WAY too small for Broadway, however.

And I certainly didn't recall the name Minnie, either. I saw the first national tour and had completely forgotten about her as well. She's the one character who gives damaging testimony during the trial that is not included on the original cast recording and her few scenes are quite brief. This time, I recall the character, as she is featured more prominently in this production, but I couldn't specifically recall her name (I don't remember the name of the factory worker with poor eyesight, either). Not remembering a character's name isn't the same as saying the character isn't in the show.

Minnie wasn't there until London.

From JRB in 2007:

Goodbye Newt, Hello Minnie. All that doubling and tripling of characters had some wonderful effects on the play, but sometimes it worked against us. We had only one actor (the wonderful Shaun Escoffery) playing the three black men in the show, Jim Conley, Newt Lee and Riley, the Governor’s driver. What we discovered during the first readthrough was that Jim Conley overwhelmed everything else: when Shaun had to switch from Conley back to Newt, it was always a letdown for the audience to watch this actor subdue all of the charisma we’d just seen. At the same time, we were severely underutilizing an enormous asset: Malinda Parris, who plays the role of Angela, maid to the Slatons. Angela really only exists to sing "A Rumblin' and A Rollin'" but it was obvious Malinda could do much more than we were asking of her. So Alfred and I decided it was finally time to let Minnie McKnight take the stage. Minnie was the domestic who worked for Leo and Lucille Frank, and she had an interesting part in the case (she was coerced into signing an affadavit that was certainly partially responsible for Leo’s indictment); we also enjoyed the dynamics that would come from having an intimate member of the household testify against Leo. So we replaced all of Newt’s testimony in the trial and his reprise in Act Two with a new piece for Minnie McKnight. And now we love having Minnie in the show – I can’t imagine that she wasn’t there all along.

Thanks for posting LYLS3637! I love the how's and why's behind cuts and additions.

You're being oddly obnoxious, yea. I don't really get why people bother with these boards if they're going to be so haughty and unfriendly. But tone is hard, I guess. Maybe I'm misreading you!