Why wasn't the 2009 Ragtime revival a success?- Page 2

[aasjb4ever]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 6:06pm

^Also that.

[djdan1079]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 8:27pm

Agree wit EM's point. It's not like the original Ragtime was a huge financial success either. I have only seen a bootleg of the original cast, but did see the revival. I thought the pacing was so slow that the show was nearly moving backwards. The talent was good for regional production at the Kennedy Center, but seemed like they were just recreating the original performances, with the exception of Noll as Mother, who was quite brilliant.

Everyone has their own opinion, but I thought the revival was about a C+

[TalkinLoud]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 9:00pm

I don't think Ragtime is a particularly great musical. Whether it is or not, the subject matter is not an easy sell.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 10:13pm

Not quite on topic, but did Memphis, despite its run and winning the Tony, end up making a profit or did it die in the red, ala Jekyll and Hyde?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 10:30pm

Just to be clear: I loved RAGTIME. It's one of the few new musicals I have really loved in the past couple of decades.

But I think despite its many brilliant moments, it has serious book problems. (I'm not saying the book is bad; I'm talking about structural problems.)

While Emma Goldman is dramatized beautifully, the "non-famous" Jews (Tateh and his daughter) don't really hold their own with the "non-famous" WASPs and African-Americans. Tateh's rise to become a film director just isn't as compelling as the story of Colehouse and Sarah, or even Mother, Father and Younger Brother. (For one thing, after Act I, all of Tateh's story happens off-stage.)

Even more problematic is the inability of anything in Act II to measure up to the gospel funeral that ends Act I. I don't know how this could have been fixed, but despite great performances by Mitchell and Mazzie, "Let Them Hear It" and "Back to Before" cannot, by their very nature, compete with "Till We Reach that Day."

(Now that I've written that, I wonder how the show would have faired with a reprise of the gospel funeral number after Colehouse's death.)

It is my opinion that since ticket prices began skyrocketing in the 1980s, it isn't enough to put up a good show. To be a success, a Broadway musical needs to send the audience running to their phones to call people and tell them they MUST see it.

RAGTIME's second act may be thought provoking, but I don't think it sent many people racing to tell their friends. (Except of course for musical theater aficionados; I'm talking about the general audience here.)

By contrast and despite the (IMV) boring two hours that precede it, MAMA MIA! ends with the ABBA medley that has the audience jumping for joy.

[adam.peterson44]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 10:43pm

I must disagree with your assessment, GavestonPS. Although the funeral does indeed send me off to intermission moved, for me the emotional highlights of the show with the greatest impact, by far, are indeed Back to Before and Make Them Hear You. And finishing on the Wheels of a Dream reprise is both moving because of what happened to Sarah and Coalhouse yet hopeful because of their child's hope for a new life. The second act certainly worked for me.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 10:54pm

Fair enough, Adam. For me, the highlight of Act II is "He Wanted to Say". It's just such a brilliant use of music and lyrics for dramatic purposes.

I have to admit I don't get the love of "Back to Before". Pretty song and brilliantly performed, but the lyrics basically tell me everything that I've seen for myself in the preceding two hours. As much as I may like the song as music, dramatically it thuds like lead balloon. IMO, obviously, and I respect that you disagree.

ETA: Adam, obviously I can't prove my speculation re RAGTIME's commercial failure without going back in time to conduct a very expensive survey of theatergoers. So I want to acknowledge that anybody else's speculation on that topic is as valid as mine. Updated On: 3/9/13 at 10:54 PM

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 11:33pm

I just don't think the show is that good. It has a handful of good songs, but as whole, I just didn't care for it. And I hate the book and how it's written in this 3rd person narrative. I get that's how the book is written, but it's a book. That whole idea doesn't work on stage when people are actually speaking the lines.

[adam.peterson44]

Posted: 3/9/13 at 11:41pm

Gaveston, I also love He Wanted to Say and agree that it is brilliantly written and executed. That and Back to Before and Make Them Hear You are the three songs that I cherry-pick whenever i don't have time to listen to the whole cast recording.

ETA: For me, Back to Before is certainly consistent with Mother's trajectory throughout the show, but it doesn't feel like a repeat of concepts to me. Rather, it feels like her epiphany where she finally decides that she has had enough of bending to accommodate father and that it can no longer work (as opposed to before where she bristles at the accommodations but still makes them, like in goodbye my love, or where she "rebels" but still stays with father, like when she tells him she is keeping the baby etc. For me, it is the culmination of her growth throughout the story. Updated On: 3/9/13 at 11:41 PM

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:16am

RAGTIME was one of 2 revivals that opened in the autumn of 2009 - the other being FINIAN'S RAINBOW. Both got the kind of reviews producers generally salivate over.

FINIAN'S RAINBOW garnered all favourable reviews...not a single negative notice or even a mixed review.

RAGTIME generally got positive notices..one mixed review, one negative and one outright pan.

The producers of both productions did not capitalize on these critical endorsements. (A brief appearance by the cast on the Macy's Thanksgiving parade was ineffective.) So, there was no "must-see" buzz generated beyond the core fans of each show. Even without the full page quote ads in the Sunday Times on the strength of the reviews alone I expected both to do better at the box office.

The night I attended FINIAN'S RAINBOW the audience at the St. James clearly loved it from the start of the Overture, and the next day RAGTIME was greeted with the same rapture. So often I hear complaints from theatre-goers that there is nothing exciting to see, but here were two first class revivals..both well sung and imaginatively staged that could not sell enough tickets to stay afloat until Tony Awards time. Either show would have won over that years's Musical revival winner (a fine, but uninspired revival of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES.)

People said that it was too soon to bring RAGTIME back but LA CAGE had just had a Tony winning revival less than 5 years earlier. Also the original RAGTIME was shuttered prematurely because of Garth Drabinsky's creative financing. (The break-even on the original RAGTIME was excessively high - much higher than other big Broadway blockbusters at the time - and there was speculation that an extra $200 K was being funneled to Drabinsky. It was said that as soon as the new owners looked at the books they closed the show to stop Garth's cash flow.)

As for Rippedman's assertion that the musical doesn't work on stage, well it seemed to work well enough for the reviewers who were at the premiere in Toronto in 1996, and for most of the reviewers who covered the Broadway opening. I was at the Toronto premiere and the audience reaction was ecstatic. The audience at the original Broadway production was even more overwhelming in their enthusiastic response. The 2009 revival got a similarly resounding ovation (and so did the last summer's very successful staging at the Shaw Festival.)

I am not saying your opinion is wrong (no such thing a far as I'm concerned) and you make an interesting point about the third-person narration, but I seriously doubt that it would factor in a person's decision to buy tickets or not. It is after all how Doctorow wrote the novel. Maybe you expected the musical to be closer in style to the film? (Obviously Frank Rich in the New York Times and one or two other critics share your view.)

Saying it "has a handful of good songs" is underestimating the score. For me, RAGTIME is one of the richest score to have been created for Broadway in the last 20 years. The stunning response to the recent concert staging seems to underscore that point.

For me, RAGTIME has a compelling story, and a collection fascinating characters combined with a score that enriches both. I wish more contemporary Broadway musicals were as well executed. And I was sorry that neither Broadway run generated the box office sales that I feel the show deserved.

[HeyMrMusic]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:21am

Ah, Finian's Rainbow! What a surprisingly beautiful production. In my eyes, it should have swept the Tonys. I have no idea how that wonderful production failed to catch on.

Both Finian's Rainbow and Ragtime used the full original orchestrations. Both gorgeous!

[After Eight]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:31am

Maybe because the show itself is lousy.

Maybe because audiences don't like leaden, preachy, bombastic shows.

[ljay889]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:33am

[sowren1020]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:39am

FrontCenter, I totally agree with you in my regards towards the show Ragtime from 2009. Finian's Rainbow was also entertaining but the depth of the material in Ragtime has so much more resonance even today. The fact that Kelsey Grammer was nominated for a Tony from La Cage Aux Folles and not Robert Petkoff from Ragtime just pointed out the fact that shows that spend money on advertisement last longer in the Tony nomination committee's minds as well as the public. If they had followed the business smarts of Memphis, perhaps they would have seen some of the four years run Memphis had, which recouped its entire $12 million capital investment before closing in August and is now touring successfully.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 12:55am

It woudl have helped too if the producers of RAGTIME woudl have gotten the production recorded. There was some interest in doing a recording but the show's producers got nasty and insisted that whoever recorded it pay the whole cost of making the CD. FINIAN's RAINBOW did get recorded (a really enjoyable CD too) but sadly by the time the disc came out the production had folded.


With his usuaal degree of pleasantness, After Eight writes: Maybe because the show itself is lousy.

Now this is EXACTLY the kind of posting I was complaining about in another thread. Don't just throw out your opinion as if you are some kind of theatre god. Do what any decent critic does..BACK IT UP with specific examples why you thing the show has no merit.

See, once again you are infiltrating a thread about a show you do not like to express more hostility. Give a little more thought to your posts, please.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 8:55am

For me, Back to Before is certainly consistent with Mother's trajectory throughout the show, but it doesn't feel like a repeat of concepts to me.

I'll listen to it again, Adam. I think far more people here agree with you than with me when it comes to that number.

[temms]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 9:19am

GavestonPS, I'm pretty much in agreement with you about your overall assessment of the show. I really did truly love it when I first saw it, but something about it ultimately puts me in the "admire more than love" category.

I think the section of the first act between "Gettin' Ready Rag" and "Wheels Of A Dream" is one of the greatest, most moving and thrilling twenty minutes in all of musical theatre. And it sets up the tragedy of Sarah so brilliantly. But the rest of the show never quite reaches that height for me, despite a whole lot of effort. All of it more than competent, but nothing that grips my heart and soul in the same way (though little Coalhouse running out at the end melts even my cold and bitter heart).

The other thing that maybe subtly affected the success of the revival was the weirdness of having "Lion King" still running in its original production while "Ragtime" was already on a revival. For me one of the things I love about revivals and Encores is the novelty of "time travel" and thinking about what Broadway (and life) was like when the show was original. When the show that beat it for Best Musical is still chugging along... I don't know. I feel like that might have contributed a little bit to the lack of heat surrounding the revival somehow.

[After Eight]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 9:25am

"Now this is EXACTLY the kind of posting I was complaining about in another thread. Don't just throw out your opinion as if you are some kind of theatre god. Do what any decent critic does..BACK IT UP with specific examples why you thing the show has no merit. "

First, I am not a critic. And you are not master of the universe. So don't dictate to me what I need to do. Nor am I a student in your class, prof. So don't give me a ten page minimum assignment.

The OP asked a question. Mine- succinct as it was --was the most legitimate answer given here.

And by the way, I DID give reasons as to why I thought it was lousy. Because it was leaden, preachy, and bombastic.

You demand examples. Ok. I'll give you two: book and score.

There. Now, stop whining.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 10:26am

"The OP asked a question. Mine- succinct as it was --was the most legitimate answer given here. "

Make that your signature so it's included in every one of your posts. It'll save everyone a lot of time.

[TalkinLoud]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 10:30am

"Leaden, preachy, and bombastic" are very accurate words to describe Ragtime.

The opening number is so brilliant, and it is pretty much all downhill from there.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 10:50am

>The opening number is so brilliant, and it is pretty much all downhill from there.<

I agree with this. I've also felt the show suffers from some of Lynn Ahrens' least effective and most monotonous lyrics.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 11:07am

I do agree the show starts to sag with all of its ballads, with tend to be repetitive lyrically and thematically. But I always found that, given effective direction, they are able to become more than the sum of their parts.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/10/13 at 9:11pm

I think the section of the first act between "Gettin' Ready Rag" and "Wheels Of A Dream" is one of the greatest, most moving and thrilling twenty minutes in all of musical theatre.

I couldn't agree more. But then the lead-up to that sequence is strong, too, in my view. Who'd have thought 50 years ago that a musical would feature a leading character who buries her baby alive and still manages to end up a sympathetic character?

I also love "Baseball" in Act II, but it's a novelty moment, a respite from the drama rather than a continuation of it.

***

I agree with you, as well, Kad. My original comment wasn't that I hate Act II or that I was ever bored. I just think the slowing of momentum has a negative impact commercially, that the audience doesn't leap to their feet and rush to call their friends the way they need to do to make a show a hit.




Updated On: 3/10/13 at 09:11 PM

[Patti LuPone FANatic]

Posted: 3/12/13 at 11:41am

This if for After Eight: Sorry for this indirect approach, but you're being spoken about in the West End message board. Phantom of London alluded to someone about hating everything that transfers to Broadway and another poster mentioned your username. https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=1057409&dt=9&boardid=3

Updated On: 3/12/13 at 11:41 AM

[After Eight]

Posted: 3/12/13 at 12:21pm

PLFan,

Thanks for the heads up.

To return to the subject of this thread, the problem went beyond marketing. Marketing can't perform miracles. No amount of ads is going to induce people to pay to see a show they don't like or don't want to see.

Don't forget, the original production was marketed from here to the moon and back. They still couldn't sell enough tickets to make a profit.

It's not the marketing of the product. It's the product.