Ragtime, one of the most ambitious musicals of our time, has all the makings of a classic. If it falls just a little short of greatness, it isn't because everyone involved in turning E.L. Doctorow's best-selling 1975 novel into a stunning, affecting and imposing musical hasn't done their job to the fullest. At its best, which is much of the time, Ragtime is as impressively propelled by its compelling interwoven dramas as it is by its splendid visual and musical texture. However, Ragtime, also gives the impression of being content with delivering what was safe and secure about the book, rather than what was nervy and challenging. Would that other shows could arrive looking as slick, as polished and as professional in all departments as Ragtime.
Still, the musical, for all its pleasures, has the misfortune to appear standing in its own way to being a work of real greatness. Nowhere in this impeccably produced, splendidly acted, and meticulously directed (by Frank Galati) musical drama is the edgy sense of danger that comes with a bold artistic breakthrough or that of an extraordinary vision. Nowhere is the daring that made musicals like Show Boat, Oklahoma! and Sunday In The Park With George, landmarks. But even with the feeling that greatness has been encrusted upon it rather than coming from within, Ragtime offers the reward of a remarkably intelligent, adult, thought-provoking, and genuinely moving theatrical experience.
The mammoth show looks perfectly at home in the new 1,821 seat Ford Center for the Performing Arts built by the Canadian production company, Livent. Like a phoenix, the theater gives the feeling of having arisen from the ashes of the old Apollo (1920) and Lyric (1903) theaters, two grand old theaters that once occupied the site. I was impressed by the tasteful and subdued color scheme of the theater whose design elements were inspired by and incorporated a combination of the Apollo's Adamesque and Lyric's Italian Renaissance style. The single most awesome feature, apart from the Greek mythological theme of the interior, is the 650 square-foot mosaic, incorporating some 172,800 hand-cut pieces of marble, that grabs the eye upon entering the oval atrium lobby. If Ragtime, the novel, proved daunting to film makers, it has had no such effect on the musical's book writer, Terrence McNally, who has done a masterful job of telling, and mostly keeping clear, the multiple and interweaving stories. It is amazing in a show with so many principal characters, that such significant, yet peripheral, characters as the great escape artist Harry Houdini, explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary, anarchist Emma Goldman, industrialists Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan, and prominent black educator Booker T. Washington, leave lasting impressions. And that infamous menage-a-trois -- architect Stanford White, show-girl Evelyn Nesbit, and her jealous husband Harry K. Thaw -- who are making headlines in a murder-sex scandal known as "The Crime of the Century" (kittenishly sung by Lynette Perry on that famous velvet swing), are also part of remarkable lot. Judy Kaye is standout as the speechifying Goldman. As part of the form and fabric of this musical, they all go about their affairs and business with great verve and panache affecting and changing the entertainment, economic, social, and political world around them. The admirably restrained theatricality with which the musical presents a panoramic portrait of America during the early part of the 20th century is not to be undervalued. Spectacle is rampant but exercised without upstaging the drama. That the $10 million musical still manages to keep its focus on the entwining lives of the middle-class WASP family of New Rochelle, New York, Tateh, the Jewish immigrant and his daughter, and Coalhouse Walker Jr., the black musician, the woman he loves, and their son, is a feat nothing short of amazing. Tying it all musically together is the towering quasi-operatic score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. Theirs is a monumental achievement that captures the flamboyance and romantic bravura of the ragtime era. But beyond the obligatory homage to Scott Joplin, the music also vibrates with its own metaphors to express the rage of economic hardship, the reforms of political unrest, as well as the soaring declarations of love and hope that also mark this rapidly changing time. It isn't such a bad thing that the broad sweep of Flaherty's music and the depth of Ahrens lyrics evokes a feeling of Americana that we haven't heard since Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. The musical begins on a wistful nostalgic key with a young boy (Alex Strange) coming forward in a path of light. As seen through his stereopticon, his well-dressed family is brought into view in a tableau of marked elegance and simplicity. Soon, all the main fictional characters are introduced, including the arriving immigrants and impoverished blacks, each group giving a graceful, unhurried expression in dance of its own social class, culture, and traditions. Although there are some delightfully danced fragments throughout, choreographer Graciela Daniele never surpasses her haunting musical staging of the opening scene.
The show's cleverest conceit and one used to great effect is the use of narrative in the third person, as spoken by the characters themselves. This musical's dramatic complexity and its musical richness are moving. Brian Stokes Mitchell is dynamic as the ill-fated, persecuted Coalhouse. As the love of his life and the mother of his son, the also tragically consigned Audra McDonald will break your heart, especially in the ravishing duet "Wheels of a Dream."
In a role with all the potential for cliche, Peter Friedman brings a tender twist to his performance as Tateh, the ingenious Jew with a destiny in movies. Marin Mazzie is terrific as the compassionate mother at the center of the WASP family who is about to take one of the era's first pro-feminist stands. You won't remain neutral when it comes to Mark Jacoby's stiffly unrelenting countenance as a typical chauvinist husband, or Steven Sutcliffe's obsessive behavior as the impetuous brother.
The list of stirring performances could go on. There are the awesome contributions of set designer Eugene Lee, who through his artistry and that of lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, allow such ordinary places as the docks of New York, Ellis Island, a vaudeville theater, an automobile assembly line, the beach at Atlantic City, and a hideout in Harlem to mirror a time that struggled between the naive and neurotic, the impulsive and compulsive, the corrupt and courageous. It was a time when the press could label a 1904 murder "The Crime of the Century." Now that takes chutzpah, which this musical requires just a little more of.
