“All the Wasted Time” is from composer Jason Robert Brown’s 1998 Broadway musical Parade. The show tells the real-life story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man from Atlanta who was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of his 13- year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in 1913. Brown’s Tony Award-winning score, the first he wrote for Broadway, is tinged with folk, blues, gospel and musical theater influences.
This song comes near the end of the show; Leo and his wife Lucille are sitting in his cell taking stock of all they have been through over the past two years, and expressing how their love for each other is as deep as it has ever been. Its rolling accompaniment is reminiscent another of Brown’s romantic duets, “I’d Give It All For You,” from the 1995 show Songs For a New World. The first revival of Parade, starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, opened on Broadway last week.
There are three modulations in the tune: at the start of Lucille’s verse at 1:37, leading into the third chorus at 3:10, and at the coda at 3:48.
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