RAGTIME is a good, flawed show **Spoilers** — Page 4

By the way, Tateh's story is very similar to my paternal grandfather's. So not only is it realistic to me, it's realistic within my own family. He was born in the town of Vitebsk, Russia. He and his parents escaped the Cossacks, who burned the village to the ground (twice, by the time of the revolution). They came to America in 1905, when my grandfather was seven years old and settled on the Lower East Side.

My grandfather's name was changed from "Shumel" to the more Anglo-friendly "Samuel." He was forbidden to speak Russian in the house, and soon forgot the language entirely. When I heard his stories as a child, he could only say his home address in the village, in Russian. It was the only phrase he never forgot.

My grandfather could play piano pretty well by ear, and by the time he was twelve, he was playing Nickelodeon piano for silent films. He used that money to work for free as an apprentice accountant, learning the trade at a mortuary. Somewhere along the lines, he met a group of brothers who were forming a movie studio. He started working as their accountant. The studio quickly took off, and my grandfather went along for the ride. He was a top executive VP at Warner Bros. from the beginning until he retired in the mid-1950s. He ran the NY office with Albert Warner and was Jack's right-hand man on the east coast. He was also in charge of all European distribution for the company. After that, he became an independent movie producer.

But the success he achieved was not without its sacrifices. Even with all the servants, the huge house (in New Rochelle, oddly enough, which is now a private school), the opening nights in NY and Hollywood, the many trips to Europe, all was not well at home. Far from it.

Still, I see a lot of my grandfather in Tateh. And vice-versa.

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Pgenre---I'll probably get a lot of "eye rolls" for this analogy, but I've always seen the trio of stories in Ragtime as the brains (Tateh), the heart (Mother), and the courage (Coalhouse). Yeah, I know, I'm an Oz nut. But they seem to balance this way for me like a tripod.

One other thing I remember about the novel is that the supporting "real" characters (Nesbit, Houdini, Ford, Goldman, etc.) play a much bigger part in the overall picture. It seems to be more of an ensemble tapestry, in that sense. (Or you could say the focus of the book is "all over the place.")

But it seems, depending on the adaptation of the source material, production, or the interpretation, that the balance can become swayed or skewed to favor certain characters.

In the film, the focus is mostly on Evelyn and Coalhouse, oddly enough. (Both actors were singled out with Oscar nominations for their work in those roles, too.) Mother and Father are catalysts, mostly serving the "main" story. Sarah barely has ten minutes in the film, if that. And Tateh (Mandy Patinkin) also seems peripheral until he meets up first with Evelyn (when he's behind the camera as her director) and then with Mother.

In the original Broadway production, it was Coalhouse (Stokes)'s show, in my opinion. Now, it seems to be Mother's show.

I think this answer depends on where the audience wants to "look." And where the creative team invites us to "look." That seems to be where the focus is.

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"Pgenre---I'll probably get a lot of "eye rolls" for this analogy, but I've always seen the trio of stories in Ragtime as the brains (Tateh), the heart (Mother), and the courage (Coalhouse). Yeah, I know, I'm an Oz nut. But they seem to balance this way for me like a tripod."

I will never look at RAGTIME the same way... I totally dig that analogy, and I plan to revisit this show again soon and will keep these thoughts in the forefront of my mind. Wonderful analogy!

P

I'm agreeing with Best about the heart/brains/courage setup of the musical RAGTIME. The novel is of course far more elaborate, with more subplots where the fictional characters interact more completely with the historic figures, and it can't be surprising that a lot of this material had to be jettisoned. For example, Evelyn Nesbit has an affair with Younger Brother and winds up doing work for the poor with Emma Goldman, which means that she eventually meets Tateh and the Little Girl.

And a lot more attention is paid to Houdini, as is well known. And the Son is more psychic in the book -- he even displays some telekinetic ability in one scene. I am not making that up, it really happens.

And I can appreciate the decision to concentrate on Mother as being the "heart" of the story, but I wish that they hadn't decided to make Father into such a jerk (at least that's how he came off at the performance I saw, a very early preview where it really felt like Mr. Bohmer hadn't completely gotten the hang of the character yet). And I have to say that Mother's journey from Good Wife to Strong Independent Woman was realized well enough but felt rather by the numbers, complete with power ballad.

Look, I don't want to complain too loudly about this show. A well-produced, well-staged, well-acted and just plain overall intelligent musical based on a major piece of American literature is a damned rare commodity these days.

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Thanks, Dottie!

"Look, I don't want to complain too loudly about this show. A well-produced, well-staged, well-acted and just plain overall intelligent musical based on a major piece of American literature is a damned rare commodity these days."

That's the way I feel, Roscoe. It's an outstanding achievement to take the complex source material and adapt it as successfully as they have. Could they have made other choices as to what to include or exclude from the book? Certainly. But all in all, I'm very happy with the choices they made.

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Updated On: 11/5/09 at 04:29 PM

I'll be succinct. I'd rather see Ragtime with all its warts, than another blow-hard musical mush from Andrew Lloyd Webber.

MiracleElixir--I don't think Ragtime aims to capture just any old aspect of the era, but rather the extraordinary aspects of it. How it dramatically changed some people, for better and for worse. And how those changes affected the entire nation.

It's not "Our Town" or a Norman Rockwell painting. (Although, I love those!) It doesn't celebrate the common man or the "ordinary day."

And, generally speaking, this is what makes for good drama. Would we really want Gone With the Wind told from the primary perspective of Sue Ellen O'Hara? Or India Wilkes?

Would West Side Story work as well if it were all about Chino and his story coming to America? Or Officer Krupke?

These stories and leading characters are compelling because of the dramatic aspects. Not because they represent the average, ordinary, or typical.

Anything but.

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Updated On: 11/5/09 at 04:47 PM

"One funny story my dad used to tell me was when she worked in a music store. Her job was to play sheet music at customers' request so they could see if they wanted to buy it. Her boss instructed her to heavily embellish the music whenever she played it to make it sound better. She didn't like it, but she did it."

Love it! I assume you've seen "In the Good Old Summertime" with Judy Garland and Van Johnson? That's what they do for a living in the movie.

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There's also a big "meet cute" scene with Cary Grant and Alexis Smith at a big sheet music store in the Cole Porter "biopic" (and I use that term VERY loosely) NIGHT & DAY. LOVE that scene!

P

Dagobert---right now, I think that many Americans are in love with the ordinary, the average, and the typical. Chalk that up to millions of reality shows (most of which are game shows that reward prizes, so maybe that's where the "luck" and "fate" part plays into the mindset). You can also chalk it up to YouTube, or any other media device that puts the "average person" in the starring role and driver's seat.

Many today are obsessed with random status reports on Twitter like "I'm eating ice cream right now" or "it's dark outside."

I remember when the news services kept polling people daily about the last presidential election. People were actually saying on the news that they thought Obama was "too smart" and not enough like them as a person. That they liked George W. Bush previously, because they could relate to him better. They also asked these same people if they wanted someone smarter than they were for president, and they said "no." I couldn't believe that. Regardless of political partisanship, I can't believe that anyone today would say that truthfully. But they did. They didn't want to vote for Obama because he was too smart, not because they disagreed with his political platform.

We live in a country with people now who want to vote for themselves as the most interesting, the most intelligent, and the most important.

That's not what E.L. Doctorow was writing about in Ragtime. And our country was a very different place at the turn of the last century. Some of it better, some of it much worse, but the basic philosophy of Americans, both new and old, was to reach for something extraordinary. Not common. People died trying to get to this country, to seek out and live the American Dream. And it wasn't a dream of entitlement. It wasn't something that was owed to them by geography or by birth or something that anyone could have handed to them by a stroke of "luck."

It was the pursuit of happiness, just like it says on that piece of paper. The chance to succeed. Not a free gift or a game show prize. Just the opportunity to make it. And hopefully, the wisdom to make the right choices and see the opportunities when they come along.

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By the way, I recommend to everyone that, in addition to reading the original novel (if you're so inclined), you rent the Milos Forman film. I decided to put the DVD on now, and I had forgotten how damn GOOD it is. Wow.

Completely different than the musical, but a highly "successful" adaptation, nonetheless.

EDIT: Oh, and Randy Newman's musical score cannot be beat. Ever. Ever. Ever.

EDIT AGAIN!: I forgot about "Mameh," both in the novel and in the movie. Yes, Tateh has a wife. She is NOT dead, but rather "dead" in his eyes. He is so focused on his work and his career, and of making something of himself, that his wife is utterly abandoned. He catches her having sex with another man, and he "kills" her with a ripping of his clothing, which is a traditional Jewish symbol for the separation between the living and the dead. A VERY powerful scene in the movie with Fran Drescher (in a terrific, brief performance). This only underscores Tateh's choices and priorities in life.

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Updated On: 11/5/09 at 07:28 PM

True dat!

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As I alluded to in another thread, most of the problems RAGTIME has from a structure standpoint is that it tries to take a rather sardonic book and make it fit a conventional book musical mold (altering its wry commentary on Americana into a sort of Joplinesque patriotism). There are just going to be flaws that stem from that. Colehouse in the book is almost an anti-hero. He goes insane. He does things that are simply unsympathetic and yet the musical calls for his sympathy at just about every turn.

There are major key plot elements in Younger Brother's relationship with Evelyn Nesbit that are left out of the musical, deeming his 2nd act motives in the musical as almost absurd.

There is a long laundry list of things that just didn't fit this adaptation for the material but that do create problems.

I like RAGTIME - I think probably it could have been more exciting if there had more adventure in the storytelling of the adaptation. But it was written as a super-oiled well manufactured musical to show off Garth Drabinsky's empire. For a musical so calculated in - well just about everything, its pretty darn good.

It just rarely has moments of incredible brilliance. And yes, a lot of the lyrics are howlers - like my favorite:

"There were gazeebos and there were no negroes." Doesn't rhyme and clearly the creative team that couldn't think of anything else.