A Companion Piece to the Frontmezzjunkie’s Review of Broadway’s Ragtime
Before I share my own review of Ragtime’s majestic Broadway transfer, I wanted to include a piece written by my companion, who attended the production with me. Her reflection captures so beautifully the urgency and emotion of the performance, and how this musical, nearly three decades old, still speaks softly, sharply, and directly to the heart of who we are as a nation today. It’s a deeply personal response to an extraordinary work of art, and I think it sets the perfect stage for the conversation that follows.
Ragtime, Now.
By Cheryl F.
The first question I ask myself when I see a production is, “Why now?” Particularly when the show is a revival. Why, among all the scripts with beautiful librettos, relevant and important lyrics, and stunning orchestrations screaming, “Pick me, produce me, love me,” must this particular show be staged today? Why must it be produced now?
This production provides the answer. Art is not only relevant when it is first made; it continues to bring meaning to its audience, not as a static snapshot of history, but as a lens through which we can clearly see ourselves. Kudos to the producers who threw their weight behind this staging, because there may be no other musical more relevant to today’s political climate than Ragtime.
I didn’t bring tissues, and that was a mistake. Ragtime, based on a book by E.L. Doctorow, brings together three groups of people living in New York in the early 1900s, and it feels frighteningly like today. Conflict erupts between races, the ruling wealthy white elite, and immigrant populations. Some lose their way as others forge a new path. The same conflict and desperate fear continue to drive people to lose their humanity now.
The stripped-down set allows the emotion to feel real and raw. I am not ashamed to admit I joined the characters in a big, ugly cry, with tears streaming indelicately down my cheeks. I shared the grief with the characters and my fellow audience members as we collectively keened for the state of our country, for the indignity our immigrant communities are bearing, the burden of injustice people of color are carrying, and the helplessness women and LGBTQIA+ individuals feel as rights are stripped away. To beautiful music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, these characters are brutalized by a system built by the white male elite, for the white male elite, and are driven to act out of desperation when justice fails to find them, time and time again.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t already know this musical. I have always loved it, though now for different reasons. I hear in it new music and echoes of who I was when I first fell in love with it over twenty years ago. I see that young girl again, captivated by this score while everyone else was discovering Rent. I see it now through the crow-footed eyes of a woman, wife, mother, who has been changed in many ways by time and experience. It is in parenthood that I have felt the most profound change in myself.
Deciding to have children is an act of hope for the future. Each parent in Ragtime takes a different approach to providing for their child, making choices not truly for themselves but for the future they envision. Children and their innocence are a central theme of this show, yet there is no protecting them from the truths of the world. They are either “running toward the future” or “from the past.”
I hardly know where to begin praising Caissie Levy’s portrayal of the nameless “Mother,” except to say it was effortless, honest, and breathtaking. Levy transforms as she journeys from a sheltered cocoon to a woman of deep awareness and agency. She becomes self-actualized, unafraid to face a future different from the path she first imagined. Her specificity, emotional openness, and the elegance of her voice ground the show in hope when all seems lost.
Coalhouse tries to model good citizenship and work within the law, but as the system fails him again and again, he turns to fight it, only to surrender later in an attempt to be the upstanding man and father he longs to be. I dreamed of seeing Joshua Henry play Coalhouse Walker ever since I first heard him sing when I was nineteen. To see that dream realized was unlike anything I have experienced. Henry brings to Coalhouse his whole self: his life, his fatherhood, and his understanding of pain and perseverance. Like him, I see the struggles our children will face, just as we have before them. When he is light, we are hopeful, when he is hurt, we are pained, when he is angry, we are too. When he sings, his voice is amplified and layered with a rich tapestry of experience and wisdom, and we are with him.
Brandon Uranowitz as Tateh shines as he teaches his daughter to see beauty amid tragedy. He quietly crafts that beauty into reality before her eyes. He focuses his own lens on art and guides his daughter into that truth, leaving his fellow immigrant community behind. Uranowitz’s portrayal is grounded in deep, unbounded love for his child. He is playful, genuinely loving, and imaginative as he brings the world around him from a silhouetted two-dimensional approximation to a life fully in motion.
The audience cried profusely and often in this shared and sacred space, almost as if commanded to under the direction of Lear deBessonet. We experienced the pain with the characters, not apart from them. Watching each parent strive in their own way to move the needle toward hope and love, for their dreams and their children’s futures, opened space for the audience to mourn our own failures and disappointments. The lives we hoped for our children have been derailed, and it is painful and undeniable. We grieve as the system and its leaders try to stomp out our hope. We cry out against a political system that seems less intent on progress and more determined to send us back again. As the characters from all groups stand together in the finale, “Wheels of a Dream“, we all pull ourselves together, steady and resolved to collectively continue to dream of that future.
