‘Ragtime’ Is Righteous Entertainment
“Ragtime” Tuesday night, Spokane Opera House
“Ragtime” does for 1906 America what “Les Miserables” does for 19th-century France.
Yes, “Ragtime” is that good. This stirring musical sweeps across all levels of turn-of-thecentury American society, and brings them together in a powerful and tragic story.
The show is immensely entertaining, but, like “Les Miz,” it is saturated with a sense of social justice. To borrow a term used to describe the show’s protagonist, Coalhouse Walker Jr., this show is righteous.
In this, my second viewing of the show, I was especially struck by the brilliant opening scene to the tune of the “Ragtime” title song. Playwright Terrence McNally and composers Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens introduce all of the characters in a simple and effective manner, by having them step forward and explain themselves. For a show with so many characters, this is vital. Yet the real triumph of this scene is the way the song and the dance sets up the show’s true subject. First we meet the white, upper middle-class Americans, dressed all in white. Then we meet the black Americans, dressed in bright colors, exuberantly dancing to their syncopated new music. Then we meet the new immigrants, dressed all in black and overwhelmed by their new, strange country. In the course of this number, these three separate crowds are thrown together, much to their mutual shock.
This, as it turns out, is what the rest of the show is about - the clash of those cultures, but also the meshing of those cultures. It strives to capture the very nature of America as it entered the 20th century, and it succeeds better than either the E.L. Doctorow book or the movie version. One reason it succeeds is that it never forgets to be entertainment. For instance, in the middle of the largely tragic second act, we are suddenly taken to the New York Giants’ Polo Grounds. The upper middle-class father takes his little boy to a baseball game for some father-son companionship, but they are surrounded by lower-class louts who keep shouting profanities and spitting.
This is all staged for comic effect, but it also illustrates a truth about the American character: No matter how refined Americans pretend to be, you can’t escape the culture’s essential rawness and boisterousness.
Also, “Ragtime” interweaves scenes of pure vaudevillean fun, including those featuring the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (The Girl on the Swing) and Harry Houdini. We also get to meet other larger-than-life figures from the era, including J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford and Booker T. Washington.
Washington figures into the show’s climax, negotiating the surrender of Coalhouse Walker Jr., who has gone from ragtime piano player to bomb-throwing revolutionary. The core of the show is about how this could have occurred.
The performances are uniformly outstanding, easily as good as those I saw on Broadway. Lawrence Hamilton is commanding as Coalhouse, and Lovena Fox has a stunning voice as his lover, Sarah. Jim Corti brought the immigrant character of Tateh to life, and Cathy Wydner did the same for her compassionate character of the Mother.
The staging has been simplified quite a bit from the Broadway version. Some of the effects border on the cheesy - a comically tiny ship sails over the ocean at the back of the stage - but this doesn’t really hurt the emotional core of the show. Like all of the greatest musicals, this one won’t divulge all of its rewards on first viewing. I loved it the first time, but I found even more to admire the second time around.
This story of America’s previous century will still be getting standing ovations far into this new century.