Ragtime

Ragtime
book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty
Based on the novel Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

It was the music of something beginning,
An era exploding, a century spinning …

The rhythms of ragtime weave their way through this powerful and sweeping musical epic about the beginnings of contemporary America.  We see the struggles and successes of the country through the eyes of three archetypal American families – a white, upper-middle class family in New Rochelle, an African-American musician in Harlem, an Eastern European immigrant and his daughter in the Lower East Side; and intertwined with their stories are the successes, scandals and stars of the period – like magician Harry Houdini, civil rights leader Booker T. Washington, political activist Emma Goldman, mogul J.P. Morgan, inventor Henry Ford and Evelyn Nesbit, the famous Girl on a Swing.

Through each of the families and the rise and fall of these characters, the musical reveals how they all connect, with each other and with history.  The family in New Rochelle – we only know them as Mother, Father, Younger Brother and Little Boy – learn to cope as Father leaves to travel to the Arctic with explorer Admiral Robert Peary. When Mother finds an African-American baby abandoned in her garden, she meets Sarah, the mother who can’t or won’t speak. Coalhouse Walker, a ragtime musician in New York, searches for Sarah, the woman he loved and when he finds her and his son, he sets out to win them back. Tateh, an immigrant from Latvia, comes to New York with his daughter and a dream – but life is harder than this artist expected, until he creates a little ‘movie’ and becomes part of the burgeoning movie business.

We experience this America through the hope of immigrants to a new country, the magic of Harry Houdini, the amazing financial success of J.P. Morgan, the politics of Emma Goldman, the fight for freedom of Booker T. Washington – but also through the music that this Tony Award-winning score draws upon from the ragtime rhythms of Harlem and Tin Pan Alley to the klezmer of the Lower East Side.  And while this musical may have been written sixteen years ago, the themes in it feel almost more true, more important, more relevant now – hope and hardship, the possibilities of great economic success and the realities of those who don’t have enough; celebrity scandals and the hope that an African-American leader can bring to a country.

This musical had its world premiere in Toronto in 1996 and opened on Broadway on January 18, 1998 and it led the 1998 Tony Awards with 13 Tony Award nominations and won for Best Score, Book and Orchestrations, and won both the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical and Best Score. Recently, book writer and playwright Terence McNally (Master Class, Love! Valor! Compassion!) talked about the continuing importance of this kind of musical – “Ragtime is in the tradition of Showboat and South Pacific, stories with a lot of plot, a moral fabric to the center of them and a real involvement with the society we live in,” Mr McNally said. “This is not musical comedy, but we are part of a very long tradition with this show.”  Directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, the cast features Thom Allison as Coalhouse Walker, Patty Jamieson as Mother and Jay Turvey as Tateh.