In the arm's-length treatment of the story by composer Jason Robert Brown and more woodenly by the book's writer, Alfred Uhry, "Parade" never fully absorbs you in any particular aspect of Frank's ghastly predicament.
There is not the slightest inconsistency in its art direction, and this, together with extremely clever sound design and natural signposting, absorbs you in the game's world entirely.
"The longer you wait to do real transformation, and the more absorbed you are in real operations, the harder it's going to be," said Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director at the Project for the New American Century, a conservative military and foreign policy group.
You absorb it as it, in turn, absorbs you.
The artist's work is so absorbing you feel you are living in her world.
It pulls you in, absorbs you.
If you're a liberal, you've never thought twice, you've never reconsidered, you've absorbed what you were taught in the government schools and by the TV".
You absorb your influences in a subtle way because you internalize and then expand on them - making them your own while at the same time engaging in a dialogue with your predecessors.
And if you get absorbed in that you lose track of who you're talking about.
