November 4, 2024: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler

Last June, as I exited the City Center Encores! production of Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s Titanic, I felt both elated and sadly deflated. Why? Because so few musicals have approached the majesty of its score since its first 1997 Broadway production. Titanic remains one of the last written before the end of the twentieth century that sent audiences home floating on a cloud of music. That is until just one year later when Lynn Ahrens and Steven Flaherty’s Ragtime followed; a one-two punch of brilliant scores in back-to-back seasons that has not been duplicated in the intervening years. If you care to prove me wrong, my statement stands. Richly textured musicals like these have been in severe decline throughout this first quarter of the twenty-first century. Yes, there have been some excellent musicals, sure, but none with such superb music and ingenious lyrics as Titanic and Ragtime. Currently playing over a two-week period and courtesy of generous donators at City Center, money has been spent on a fourteen-performance run of Ragtime. Led by James Moore’s sensational orchestra, you can hear this major musical as its meant to be heard — with soaring voices on each and every note that allow the best of Broadway performers to act and sing the hell out of it. 

Based on E.L. Doctorow’s sprawling 1975 novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ragtime was later made into a 1981 film by director Miloš Forman that had its supporters, yet too many detractors to turn it into a hit (many successful novels fail in the film adaptations — it happens all the time). Then in 1998, director Frank Galati, along with book writer Terence McNally and the team of Ahrens and Flaherty wrote the musical version. Doctorow’s mix of fictional and real characters in a turn of the century setting was distilled into a version of the book’s events that eliminated many subplots and tweaked certain stories to dramatic advantage, interpolated with a host of songs that burst with anger, joy, pride and determination in each and every scene played.

The story revolves around a family in 1906 New Rochelle; Mother, Father, Son, Mother’s Younger Brother and a live-in Grandfather, who become caught up in some strange new music when a Black infant is left abandoned in the garden of their home “on the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill.” From there, the turbulent new decade becomes a swirl of turmoil and violence, dealing as it does not only with the emergence of Blacks searching for a way into society but for immigrant Jews as well. How Doctorow and McNally master it all is just that, masterful.

In the minimal staging at City Center that Lear Debessonet has designed, we get the essence of the story without the distractions of flamboyant scenery and costumes. Yes, it feels a cheat to not get the full effect of Coalhouse Walker Jr.’s Model-T automobile driving onstage, but it’s a small price to pay for the ability to employ all those musicians. Tony Award-winning designer David Rockwell has contributed projections and a few pieces of scenery and props that get the job done effectively and Adam Honoré’s lighting is excellent. The costumes by Linda Cho lend the right touch of authenticity, if not very much variety. Again, due to budget constraints, there are few costume changes for the principals. The sound is consistently good, the work of Kai Harada.

As for the casting, cheers to Debessonet and Craig Burns of the Telsey Office, who have populated this production with outstanding actors and singers from top to bottom. First and foremost is Joshua Henry’s Coalhouse. This powerhouse performer has done beautiful work in the past (Scottsboro Boys and Carousel to name just two), but here the extraordinary range and depth of his magnificent voice is on full display. Perhaps it’s that he has aged and his vocal instrument is allowing for new colors, but whatever the reason, the results are astonishing. I was very surprised by Caissie Levy’s Mother, which starts soft and ends strong, much as the role dictates. Her “Back to Before” stopped the show and rightly so. Colin Donnell, properly stiff and unyielding as Father, sings his heart out while still conveying a confused understanding of a world that is changing around him. Ben Levi Ross, so good in last season’s off-Broadway musical The Connector, is a force to be reckoned with. Not only a perfect fit for the role of Younger Brother, but his voice sent chills up my spine. Brandon Uranowitz, good in everything he does, makes a splendid Tateh, mining the part for its humor and pathos. That he’s a wonderful singer is simply icing on the cake. Nicelle Lewis (Dorothy in last season’s The Wiz), is a little one-note in playing Sarah as meek, but she certainly proves herself in the “Wheels of a Dream” duet with Joshua Henry that brought down the house. A round of applause, too, for Shaina Taub, moonlighting from her starring role in Suffs, the musical for which she wrote both book and score and took home two Tonys for her efforts last June. Short of stature with a commanding voice, every time she took the stage the place rocked. And in the non-singing role of Grandfather, veteran actor Tom Nelis got every single laugh on every one of his lines. Perfection.

Truly, the whole cast gave their all. Stephanie Styles’ Evelyn Nesbit, Rodd Cyrus’s Harry Houdini, John Clay III’s Booker T. Washington, and especially young Matthew Lamb’s Little Boy (Edgar). I saw him play this same role in a production last November at Signature Theatre in Washington D.C. and let me put it this way: He was lovely then but now he’s matured into the part, stealing scenes left and right.

This production is actually not part of City Center Encores! but billed as part of its Annual Gala Presentation. If it is just another way of expanding the Encores! season from three to four, then I’m all for it. In fact, cheers to Lear Debessonet’s Encores! leadership, for the last few choice shows she’s supervised have been well worth seeing: Into the Woods, Dear World, Oliver!, The Light in the Piazza, Once Upon a Mattress, Jelly’s Last Jam and the aforementioned Titanic, all produced over the span of roughly two and a half years. Oh, and add in another Gala Presentation, Parade, which not only went to Broadway, but won the Tony for Best Revival. It has been recently announced that DeBessonet is leaving Encores! to take over from Andre Bishop at Lincoln Center after his retirement from thirty-two years on the job. Tough shoes to fill, yes, but she’s certainly leaving City Center with her head held high. Ragtime is a triumph.

Ragtime is at City Center, 131 W 55th Street, NYC, now through November 10th. For ticket information, please visit: https://www.nycitycenter.org.

Ron Fassler is the author of Up in the Cheap Seats: An Historical Memoir of Broadway and the forthcoming The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements. For news and "Theatre Yesterday and Today" columns when they break, please hit the FOLLOW button.