RAGTIME is a good, flawed show **Spoilers** — Page 5

Sorry, Best 12 - We will simply have to disagree. Its a horrid lyric. RAGTIME is full of clunkers. Nice music though.

Michael Bennett and Best12:

For the record, "There were gazebos, and there were no negroes" is an exact quote from Doctorow's novel.

Yes, and I doubt he ever intended them to rhyme as a couplet in a musical phrase...

You have this on good authority, Mike B??

"This notion of some people being successful just out of "luck" really rubs me the wrong way. I don't buy it for a minute. Tateh and Best12bars grandfather and many other successful people had some luck, sure, but luck is when opportunity meets preparation. and determination and creativity and perseverence. I think it is those latter qualities that distinguish the Tatehs of the world from all the others, not just luck. Is it possible some really talented people never "make" it only because they did not get their lucky break? Sure, I suppose. But to think that those who do make it are "just lucky?" That sounds like jealousy and sour grapes-- and the same warped sense of entitlement to the American Dream espoused by Willy Loman and Sondheim's Assassins."

This is an interesting discussion. I think we're coming down on opposite sides because of two valid points - you don't think that a show should attack the American Dream just for the sake of it, or at the expense of acknowledging real achievement. I don't think a show should embrace a successful American Dream story at the expense of following through on the social justice issues that the story has raised.

As I said, I agree that it was perseverence etc combined with luck that led to Tateh's success. I concede that he may have been more perservering and creative than those around him too, for that matter. The way in which his business idea is handed to him - the guy even tells him that the product needs a name! - counts against this, but obviously that could just reflect the inevitable difficulties of getting plot points across quickly and clearly. IMO, while we can know that Tateh is lucky, it's impossible to decide whether or not he's *particularly* creative/hardworking given the limited information we have (from the musical at least).

I think that what distinguishes the unsuccessful people around Tateh in 'Ragtime' from some of those in the other dramas you mentioned is that they don't start off with average American lives (ie, pretty good lives) that they are unsatisfied with. Instead, they're working hard just for a chance get the life of the average American. But in the meantime they are suffering from poverty, sickness, unfair working conditions, etc. Surely it shouldn't only be the lucky - or even the unusually creative or brilliant - who have the right to a reasonable quality of life? Yet most of them miss out. I think that we *should* be sour about this. Ragtime seems to start making a point about this, then abandons it for a (superficially) feelgood story instead.

"Because it heaps sentiment and emotional import upon these events, but the resonance never really comes because we're given no reason to really be invested or care other than we're being told to."

I saw it tonight for the first time after being a long time fan of the cast recording and I have to say that this pin points one of the major issues I had with it. I think if they cut some of the characters (Nesbitt, Houdini,) Some of the Songs (Gettin' Ready Rag, Crime of the Century, Atlantic City, Henry Ford and as much as I enjoy it the baseball song) and added in some more songs and material for the central characters they've decided to focus on it would help a bunch. Though the songs above are enjoyable they don't do a whole bunch to advance the plot and could be easily worked around.

---

Please. Gettin Ready Rag doesn't tell us a thing about Coalhouse and is in fact a shuck-and-jive number that is not a little condescending. So much for 'shooting from the hip.'

Can't we all just agree that Jonathan Hammond works those Houdini costumes like nobody's business. GRRRRRR!!!!! Hot stuff!

---

oh wow Budfrump, sorry to hear that. It was pretty cool.

---

Best12, if the history of film, literature, music, and theater has taught us nothing else it's that there are rarely works insulated from the most harsh, generally subjective, and not infrequently, passive-aggressive assaults of the critic.

Oliver Sacks, the prolific neurologist in the current issue of "Brain" has a fascinating piece on music. One observation stands out:

"The emotional response to music can be unbelievably complex and mysterious and deep. You can be sort of agonized, sort of ecstatic, and you don't know what's happening. You can't even say what the feeling is."

It's not a reach to suggest the same mysterious neurological "ghost in the machine"
will elicit opposite or discordant responses in various people when listening to poetry or observing narrative.

The bottom line is, criticism because of advances in the neurosciences has been seen for what it is: nothing more than the expression of idiosyncratic, articulated responses to various forms of stimuli, none any more valid than another.