Don’t go to the Donmar if you want a repeat of its Guys and Dolls. The parade that gives the musical its title seems a jaunty affair, with Atlantans and their belles prancing in smiling commemoration of Dixie’s doings in the civil war. But it comes in ironic counterpoint to the tale of Leo Frank, who was convicted of child murder in 1913 on no more solid evidence than that he was a Jew and a Yankee and – well, let’s just say that, as far as the Ku Klux Klan was concerned, ropes didn’t exist to tie up only blacks, women and horses.

It is a true story and, despite the attempts at uplift near the end of Rob Ashford’s production, a most distressing one. There’s no opening here for the black humour of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd or the slick cynicism of Chicago. So it wasn’t surprising that Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s musical was no great success when it was first staged in New York in 1998. “It possesses the mild, grey virtues, like good taste and worthy moral feelings,” I wrote at the time – but I hedged my critical bets by adding that the show might work in an intimate space, particularly the Donmar.

And now here it belatedly is, proving the point. A small stage and cast won’t allow the lavish effects that Hal Prince brought to the original show: cannon, fire trucks, even refuse collectors with placards reading “You live in the world’s greatest city, let’s make it the cleanest and healthiest”. But who cares? Now there’s a gathering intensity to Leo’s tale as he is framed by the district attorney – who declares that “hanging another nigra ain’t enough this time, we gotta do better” – and, thanks to the efforts of his wife and outraged Northerners, is about to overturn his conviction when – but, again, I cannot reveal the ending.

The performances are uniformly fine, starting with Bertie Carvel’s Leo. Imagine Woody Allen without the humour or lack of inches, and you have the character’s anxiety, hypochondria and hand-wringing neuroticism.

But Carvel adds a dry, prim, punctilious quality to the picture and even comes close to convincing you of the authors’ wishful belief: that being on death row changes Leo from a driven fusspot into a mature man and loving husband. He also has a strong voice, best heard in a lament for cultural isolation, How Can I Call This Home?

Sondheim would have brought more dissonant excitement to the songs and maybe more texture to words that dare not explore the weird, intestinal stirrings that accusations of murderous paedophilia might provoke in a man and his wife.

Brown’s robust score embraces country, gospel, love song, even chain-gang chant. The Donmar hasn’t reclaimed a masterpiece from obscurity, as it did with Assassins, but it does offer a powerful, engrossing evening.

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