The Broadway Theatre Review: Ragtime
By Ross
An upright piano still stands silently in a pool of light, waiting to unleash the epic heartbeat of Ragtime. A young boy approaches, tentative but sure, touching the keys and beginning the story that will completely engulf and overwhelm us. In that simple, intimate gesture, the iconic musical blooms outward into a sound that is once again as glorious as one could ever hope for, perhaps even more powerful now that it fills Lincoln Center‘s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The harmonies rise up from below, like a sunrise over the Hudson, voices layered with history and humanity, ever so full and radiant, sending vibrations through the theatre and into the bones of everyone lucky enough to be there.
What was stirring and grand in its New York City Center incarnation has found its true big city home on Broadway. And inside Lear deBessonet’s magnificent production, with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally, those fireworks expand, not by adding spectacle, but by letting the emotion breathe and the engagements grow. It’s still gloriously simple, with that epic music and message taking center stage, held in the palm by so many spectacularly gifted performers. But in this larger space, Ragtime feels like it has grown into the national moment of truth it was forever meant to be: a story of America’s past that sings unflinchingly into its present, and makes us look deep within.
All of these characters are Ragtime. From the newsie shouting headlines to J.P. Morgan counting his coins; from the dreamers to the doers, the immigrants to the industrialists; they all carry the pulse of this music in their bones. They tell the emotional story, the racial story, the immigrant story, the financial story, the power story, the powerless story, and yes, the empowerment one too. Together, they form a great human orchestra, playing one score filled with hope, love, anger, pride, and resilience.
The stage itself becomes the perfect rotating vehicle for this story’s scope and sweep. It lives and breathes in the depths of that stage. The epic motion of the turntable lets history revolve before our eyes, with the cast rising up behind the piano as if from a distant memory, the immigrants sailing into view with hope and exhaustion, Houdini descending in dazzling illusion, and the girl on the swing squealing with determined delight. The visual poetry underscores what Ahrens and Flaherty achieve in the lyrics: a colour-coded tapestry of race and class, threaded with strength and empathy. Their songs ever so elegantly sneak in ideas about privilege, identity, and justice with such subtle force that we often don’t realize how deeply they’ve landed until the tears start rolling down our cheeks.
And then there’s Emma Goldman, played with her usual fire and fearlessness by Shaina Taub (Suffs), whose final declaration, “I’ve been arrested again… but this time, I’m deported,” lands with a ferocity that wasn’t quite as shattering a year ago. In today’s climate, as deportations rise and the cruelty of displacement echoes across headlines, that line hits like a thunderclap. It’s no longer a historical note; it’s a mirror. You could feel the collective intake of breath in the house, not just with that line but with hundreds, as if the entire audience suddenly realized how close we still stand in the chaos and hate of the past, wondering how we all find ourselves on the edge of the same abyss.
After compassion overrides the hate-filled “someone should arrest that woman,” Sara “Brown Eyes” ignites the room, her first song cutting through the air with emotional precision and grace. Nichelle Lewis (Broadway’s The Wiz) sings with a quiet radiance that builds (even when a bit fuzzy) until it bursts, overwhelming the house, as do all three leads. Joshua Henry (Broadway’s Carousel) as Coalhouse is all fire and passion combined with pride and pain. Brandon Uranowitz (Broadway’s Leopoldstadt) brings an endearing, hopeful ache to his vulnerability as Father, trying to locate himself and his daughter in a world that seems armed against them, and Caissie Levy (Donmar/West End’s Next to Normal) as Mother masterfully answers them with strong, tender emotional clarity and a voice that seems to rise up into the heavens. Their companions: Tabitha Lawing’s pure-hearted Little Girl, Nick Barrington’s innocent Little Boy, Ben Levi Ross’s magnificently idealistic Younger Brother, and John Clay III’s dignified Booker T. Washington, give them the ground to stand so spectacularly upon. Without them, and without the full force of this entire ensemble, this Ragtime wouldn’t strike as deeply or resonate so completely. Every shared glance, every note harmonized in pain or joy, adds a necessary, resounding layer to the music of this moment.
The physical production supports the enormity of that emotion. David Korins’ design, elegantly symbolic, feeling both mythic and human, and Adam Honoré & Donald Holder’s lighting give the story a pulse of honour and shadow. Ellenore Scott’s choreography allows the ensemble to breathe and rotate through time with a movement that mirrors history itself, and how it circles back again and again. When the two ships pass each other on the horizon, one arriving, one departing, doors open to all the chaos, pain, and inevitability that stands before them. It’s one of those breathtaking moments that remind you how visual theatre can expand on a framework, where bravery and heartbreak can cross paths in an unjust world, and how we can begin to look at something from different vantage points than we did before.
In a way, this Ragtime feels less like Lincoln Center Theater’s usual grand musical revivals, like The King and I or South Pacific, and more like their landmark play, Oslo. It’s built with that same emotional, theatrical muscle, but it finds its strength not in stunning visual props but in moral ideals like negotiation, identity, and empathy unpacked from within. These are not just concepts but acts of faith. This Ragtime doesn’t just resurrect history, it wrestles with it, sings to it, and refuses to look away.
By the time the cast gathers for that final tableau, three narratives converge in fragile, newly forged harmony, and we can’t help but ask the question that’s always haunted Ragtime: Where is the America we were promised? This Broadway revival doesn’t answer it; it demands we look up, search deep in our souls for our stance, to find a way to listen, to respond, and to remember. Ragtime sings of the dream that built this country and the pain that continues to test it. And on Broadway, with this glorious company, that song has never sounded more urgent, more human, or more full of hope.
