| . | 12/02/2009
Ragtime
By: Jeannie Lieberman
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! This season’s best musical has arrived and the intimate Neil Simon theater (alas, doing much better than its namesake) is bursting at the seams with the crowd’s repeated roars of approval. Amidst the elegance of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, the energy of Fela! and the earthiness of Memphis, Ragtime stands out as it captures your heart, mind and soul with the breadth of its story and the depth of its characters, all swathed in the bittersweet and haunting music of its title.
Director choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge, with Derek McLane (set), Santo Loquasto (costumes) and Donald Holder (lighting), have found the solution to the show’s spectacular but overambitious 1998 production with the astonishing clarity of their breathtaking opening number. The house resonated in spontaneous applause and cheers at the three tiered, no frills, industrial looking set on which the vibrant cast of 40 were presented; the New Rochelle blue bloods stage front complete with pristine parasols, the second tier working class and “colored” and, on top, the tattered immigrants, separate at first, then interweaving in specific patterns and movement, all singing the show’s stirring title song and communicating with immediacy and joy.
Christianne Noll photo by Joan Marcus
Terrence McNally ’s panoramic script of the collision of three families: the upscale WASPS, Coalhouse Walker and his family and that of the immigrant Tateh, based on E. L. Doctorow's 1975 novel about America in the early 20th century, utilize this remarkably versatile set to transport from the streets of New York to Hollywood; from Ellis Island where Tateh (Robert Petkoff) and his daughter, The Little Girl (Stephanie Rosenthal) arrive with other European immigrants, to the New Rochelle upscale home of Father (Ron Bohmer), Mother (Christianne Noll) Mother’s restless Younger Brother (Bobby Steggert) and precocious son, The Little Boy (Christopher Cox), where Sarah (Stephanie Umoh) and her baby are saved and to which Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Quentin Earl Darrington) comes to court; to Union Square, where Brother, searching for more meaning in life than the insularity of his proper family, first hears activist Emma Goldman (Donna Migliaccio), to Atlantic City where the family goes for a change of atmosphere and they first meet Tateh and his daughter, fleeing the city and its dangers and suffocating poverty, to a vaudeville theatre in which Brother is smitten by notorious seductress Evelyn Nesbit (Savannah Wise) onstage, to a Harlem nightclub where we see Coalhouse in his glory as the beloved piano player, to the Polo Grounds for an hilariously bawdy baseball game, and to the inside of a Ford Factory where the car is made which becomes Coalhouse’s obsession, and is both his source of pride and eventual downfall.
Race has been exploited in other musicals like Memphis but not nearly as explosively as here as it portrays one man’s fight for dignity against the humiliation of racism. the empowered cruelty of the local firefighters as they trashed Coalhouse’s beloved new car, the symbol of the Industrial era and his triumph of social acceptance, and the inspiration for the show’s anthem song “On The Wheels of a Dream”, the murder of a simple black woman trying to get the attention of the visiting President to bring justice to her husband, and the biggest little moment near the end when the bigoted Father finally, pause, gulp, shakes Coalhouse’s hand, empathically drives the point home. Presidents and millionaires, entertainers like Houdini and Evelyn Nesbit and activists like Emma Goldman, adventurers like Admiral Peary, philanthropists like J P Morgan, inventors like Henry Ford, murdered architect and socialite Stanford White
and icons like Booker T. Washington pop up in this rich tapestry like colorful threads in an E L Doctorow’s bittersweet, cloudy story.
The streamlined pacing, like an emotional rollercoaster, flies past, now tightened and pared down, incorporating the enormous range of subplots so fast they are almost subliminal until you reflect later (as you will) on all that has gone onstage. Scene after scene packs an emotional wallop with nary a sigh or a note to spare so that nothing impedes its progress into your psyche. Brilliant! Tight a drum staging with moments of exuberant choreography burst though as sunshine in this increasingly dark story.
Santo Loquasto’s wonderfully detailed costumes delineate the difference in the classes, the simple elegance of the upper class with their pretty parasols, the exuberant ragtime/cakewalk band marching onstage, the sweaty muted colors of the working class, the threadbare poverty imposed grittiness of the immigrants and, when the cast performs multiple roles, flyaway costumes can change exaggerated clownish minstrels into the upper class by a flick of the wrist and a half turn before your eyes, Clever!
Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens ’ ragtime flavored score, with its impressive 28-piece orchestra and William David Brohn orchestrations, under James Moore’s sensitive music direction, delivers its stirring anthems (two) “The Wheels of a Dream” and “Make Them Hear You”, the flashy and exuberant “Getting Ready Rag”, the show bizzy , funny “Crime of the Century”, the hypnotic “Gliding”, the touching love song “Sarah Brown Eyes”, the tender “Our Children”. The sad tinged/happy music of ragtime pervades the show. Orchestrations can go from joyful to sad with the mere change of a note here and there showing how music can play on the heartstring and telescope the emotions sometimes (as in opera) before the singers actually deliver it. Weaving through the dramatic story, it wraps around your heart and stays in your head long after you leave.
At a time when it seems necessary to feature a Hollywood or TV star for survival on Broadway this production was brave enough to feature many Broadway debuts of “unknowns”, notably Quentin Earl Darrington as Coalhouse (not as handsome as Brian Stokes Mitchell but, boy, can he sing!), Stephanie Umoh as Sarah (less imposing that Audra MacDonald but more appropriate t the part), Jonathan Hammond as Houdini and Mark Aldrich as the drunken Irish troublemaker Willie Conklin. Savannah Wise as Evelyn Nesbit, the ravishing 15 year old femme fatale who inspired duels and caused the Crime of the Century, hardly looks that inspirational and Christianne Noll, as Mother, is a bit too constrained in her transition from dutiful, obedient wife to pre-era feminist but handles her songs nicely. As Tateh Robert Petkoff transitions marvelously (and sexily) from fear ridden, ambition driven immigrant peddler to successful movie tycoon and represents the hope of the future as he proudly sings of his new multi-ethnic family – the immigrant bonding with the upper class and the black child playing with white together in one family.
And, if you fought hard to control your emotions during the show, the curtain call appearance of a pint sized little Coalhouse III will put you over the top …and he sang every word in the finale!
Just in time for the holidays – just in time to solve your gift giving angst – a pair to this season’s hit musical – not a doubt in my mind – would be a homerun!
Hats off to the show’s creator/producer Garth Drabinski who brought this masterpiece to life 10 years ago.
Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, 212-307-4100 or (877) 250-2929. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.
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