Before they were icons, Mamie and Emmett Till were a happy family. Mamie raised the dapper and entertaining Emmett, and, with some prodding from her mother Alma (who won't be contained), dared to explore love again. Beautiful things were on the horizon.

Wisely, there's no foreshadowing to the horrible events, so they can come from left field. Emmett's brutal lynching is prudently kept offstage. Mamie's decision to display her son's gruesomely tortured body to the world is beautifully presented in the show's final number.

Till is a musical tragedy with love as the greatest theme. It is a secular Pieta.

DC Cathro and Leo Schwartz have created a rousing and powerful new musical.

Instead of focusing on young Emmett's death, TILL celebrates his life - one that was vibrant and full of love and humor. Juxtaposed with the Till family in Chicago are scenes of ever-building racial tensions in Mississippi, where Emmett's fate will eventually be sealed.

Till's inevitable, horrific murder looms over the story from the beginning providing a sense of tragic destiny that fuels the story. There is no staging of the murder itself. The lead-up and the aftermath is enough. And it is devastating.