1/31/2024 0 Comments Ragtime musical plot![]() experiments with a new form of syncopation that will usher in the Jazz Age. Just a few miles yet a world away in Harlem, the suave Black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. Mother, Father, Grandfather, the Little Boy, and Mother’s Younger Brother live in a New Rochelle, New York, Victorian bubble of prosperity. The plot centers on three families, each representing different tiers of American society at the turn of the 20th century. Regional productions have been staged during this 25th-anniversary year, and a concert version with many of the original cast is in the works. Doctorow’s wildly popular novel, published just before America’s Bicentennial, was successfully translated to Broadway in 1998 and revived in 2009. Nurney, Ariel Friendly, Keenan McCarter, Nkrumah Gatling, Jordyn Taylor, Theodore Sapp, and Kara-Tameika Watkins in ‘Ragtime.’ Photo by Daniel Rader.Į.L. Excellent singers bring Stephen Flaherty’s music and Lynn Ahrens’ lyrics to life, despite being overpowered on occasion by the orchestra. ![]() Pierpont Morgan’s enormous fur-collared frock coat to the raggedy garments that swathed recent immigrants, paint vivid portraits of the bold and the benighted 30-plus characters that animate this play. Some 16 musicians under the direction of Jon Kalbfleisch play in front of gorgeous arches reminiscent of New York’s old Pennsylvania Station. ![]() Lee Savage’s brawny metallic set provides an inventive backdrop to the musical’s quick-paced scenes. It’s a tall order for a small, intimate theater.Īs in the original version, the production values in the Signature production aim for the sky. Kudos to director Matthew Gardiner for undertaking a supremely ambitious work brimming with all that was best and worst about America’s Gilded Age: hope and despair, opportunity and savage repression, astonishing technological breakthroughs, and blighted lives. Twenty-five years after its Broadway debut, the iconic musical Ragtime has been revived at Signature Theatre. ![]()
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