RAGTIME Reviews — Page 7

sorry you found my commens foolish ... i'll try to be more "important" from now on.

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Also does a quote from the NY Times really sell THAT many tickets? WICKED seems to have survived without one.

I don't know. In all honesty, I felt he was pretty much going to propose to Chenoweth at the end of the review and that his whole criticism revolved around her performance.

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Frontrowcentre2:

Many thanks for your reply.

I do see what you mean.

BRANTLEY DIDN'T PAN WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why does that have to come up in every ****ing review thread?

I don't think it's odd, given the themes and the times. Wouldn't be surprised to see our First Family there at some point.

Now if Glen Beck had been there, THAT would have been odd...

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity should all see this show. It might give them all some perspective and compassion.

Please, they'd all call Coalhouse a terrorist and claim the show is trying to indoctrinate audiences with its liberal agenda.

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Updated On: 11/16/09 at 07:51 PM

NY1 is a Rave:

""Ragtime" is a sweeping, powerful musical about a restless period in our history. But it is also an intimate story about love, loss and growing up. It is this aspect, not the broad epic quality, that director Marcia Milgrom Dodge went after and, with this nearly flawless production, she has struck a most resonant chord.

...

For all its virtues, "Ragtime" is not an easy show to stage. It requires a delicate balance combining textbook history with an emotional depth that touches both our heads and hearts. To say that this company got it right is an understatement. This "Ragtime" is one for the ages."
Review and Video

According to the way the actors appear in the opening night photos, the audience must have given them a standing ovation! I am so very glad for this cast!
Now, if only I could make it to NYC to catch this show before it closes...I was so bummed out to have missed it in DC, hope I can see it this time around.

Wall Street Journal will run on Friday. Teachout is so right-wing, I can't imagine he'll approve of the politics.

Meanwhile, Time Out New York is Mixed

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/80658/ragtime-at-neil-simon-theatre-theater-review

The musical Ragtime emerged in a time of riches, and its original 1997 production has been faulted, in hindsight, for its opulence: the literalist detail of its pageantry, which included an onstage Model T. Now the adept director Marcia Milgrom Dodge offers us a tighter, leaner version of the show that whittles it down to the sinews. The impulse is right, but the results are mixed. For in stripping away the trimmings—except Santo Loquasto’s beautiful costumes—this revival exposes the boom-time naïveté and sentimentality that always lurked in the musical’s soul.

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Valerie Jarrett also came to see the DC production.

New York Magazine has kind words for Dodge's production and some of the design, but I'd call it Mixed overall, since the critic seems to feel the show's writing and concept defeat the production.

http://nymag.com/arts/theater/reviews/62196/

Ragtime has all the stuff Broadway audiences should eat up: A plot that hinges on murder, vengeance and injustice; a story whose moral seriousness glows like polished veneer; a number of fantastic voices onstage; the requisite number of “My dreams have died” songs. It’s an ambitious sprawl of a story, adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 historical pastiche about the early, heady days of the twentieth century. And in this revival—the show first appeared in 1998—director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge and her 40-strong ensemble cast do their damnedest to keep things moving forward with the zeal and energy of a well-tuned engine.

So why does the whole shebang come off like the product of a too-efficient assembly line? Neither Terrence McNally’s mishmash of a book nor the sometimes-syrupy songs (by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens) do the show any favors. And then there are the inherent problems of Doctorow’s novel, a puffed-out chest of a book that uses its characters as flattened symbols of racism, intolerance, hypocrisy, and disillusionment. It groans under its own lesson plan, and the musical follows suit.

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Did anybody else get tickled a bit when Deanna on Word of Mouth called Robert Petkoff, "TaTa"?... :)

Updated On: 11/18/09 at 06:33 PM