Author: Tom Williams

The story is that of the 1915 lynching of Jewish industrialist Leo Frank (Jim Deselm) in Georgia. Leo is from Brooklyn, came to Georgia to manage a relative’s pencil factory, and can’t stand the South. It doesn’t care for him, either. His wife, Lucille (Sarah Bockel), an Atlanta native, thinks he’s overly hard on a region he doesn’t understand, and often wishes her husband could be more emotionally intimate. On Confederate Memorial Day, one of the girls who works in the factory, thirteen year old Mary Phagan (Peyton Tinder) comes Leo’s office to collect her pay. That night, she is found murdered in the factory basement.

Since The Submission was finished in 2011, the focus is all on Danny pretending to be black. Today, the biggest controversy in theatre regarding discrimination vs. tokenism is about women, but Emilia doesn’t talk about gender as much. For dramatic tension, Talbott made both characters bigots, leaving a discussion of the issue entirely on its merits up to the audience. The show is about issues habitual theatre-goers have wanted to see addressed for some time. The character Pete brings up the question of what all this looks like to outsiders. I’m really not sure what someone outside our community would make of this story, but I suspect similar discussions are happening elsewhere. The play is called The Submission, but I doubt anyone will surrender.

Greenberg’s script cuts right to the heart of anxiety over gay men in sports by including lots of showering and changing scenes. Eight actors are fully naked at least once onstage. It’s necessary for an honest examination of the issue, but requires a lot of courage from the cast. For that alone, I commend them all, but they also give strong performances besides that.