#1
Posted: 11/11/09 at 8:34pm
Forgive me if this post is less than competent. I'm still reeling from this afternoon's performance.
Ragtime was the first "serious" musical I ever saw on Broadway. I'd been to shows before, but they were mostly the kind geared towards kids (Beauty and the Beast) or mindless entertainment (Jekyll and Hyde). Ragtime, I can honestly say, changed my life. It was the first transformative theatrical experience I'd ever had, the first time I understood that theatre can hold a mirror to the struggles and triumphs of American life. I've always cherished my memories of the original production and have held the show close to my heart. Needless to say, I had very high hopes for this revival.
I'm pleased to report that they were met in almost every respect.
Ragtime has been the subject of stripped-down productions before: both London and The Papermill Playhouse have seen stagings that substitute black chairs for Evelyn Nesbit's swing and Coalhouse's car and feature no piano onstage. However, Marcia Milgrom Dodge's production strikes the most copacetic balance between full production and deconstruction that I've seen to date. It gives the audience just enough to have them feel that it wasn't done on the cheap, but takes enough away that the focus of the show is squarely where it belongs: on the characters and their lives. The images of music coming out of Coalhouse's glass piano or him walking his Model-T across the stage are striking.
The cast is extraordinary and, on many occasions, made me forget their predecessors (high praise indeed). Christiane Noll's Mother is a rational, deeply intelligent woman stifled by the society in which she lives. To watch her transformation from unknowing housewife to proto-feminist was thrilling, and her "Back to Before" really delivered. Robert Petkoff is everything you'd want from a Tateh, and Bobby Steggert makes The Younger Brother into something more than a quixotic idealist. Quentin Earl Darrington registers the wide variety of Coalhouse's emotions. Only Stephanie Umoh disappoints--though one must admit that Audra McDonald isn't the easiest act to follow. She acts the role well but her singing voice leaves much to be desired.
In short, this is easily the best revival of a musical that Broadway has seen since Doyle's Sweeney Todd. May it have a long life at the Neil Simon--I cannot wait to go back!
Ragtime was the first "serious" musical I ever saw on Broadway. I'd been to shows before, but they were mostly the kind geared towards kids (Beauty and the Beast) or mindless entertainment (Jekyll and Hyde). Ragtime, I can honestly say, changed my life. It was the first transformative theatrical experience I'd ever had, the first time I understood that theatre can hold a mirror to the struggles and triumphs of American life. I've always cherished my memories of the original production and have held the show close to my heart. Needless to say, I had very high hopes for this revival.
I'm pleased to report that they were met in almost every respect.
Ragtime has been the subject of stripped-down productions before: both London and The Papermill Playhouse have seen stagings that substitute black chairs for Evelyn Nesbit's swing and Coalhouse's car and feature no piano onstage. However, Marcia Milgrom Dodge's production strikes the most copacetic balance between full production and deconstruction that I've seen to date. It gives the audience just enough to have them feel that it wasn't done on the cheap, but takes enough away that the focus of the show is squarely where it belongs: on the characters and their lives. The images of music coming out of Coalhouse's glass piano or him walking his Model-T across the stage are striking.
The cast is extraordinary and, on many occasions, made me forget their predecessors (high praise indeed). Christiane Noll's Mother is a rational, deeply intelligent woman stifled by the society in which she lives. To watch her transformation from unknowing housewife to proto-feminist was thrilling, and her "Back to Before" really delivered. Robert Petkoff is everything you'd want from a Tateh, and Bobby Steggert makes The Younger Brother into something more than a quixotic idealist. Quentin Earl Darrington registers the wide variety of Coalhouse's emotions. Only Stephanie Umoh disappoints--though one must admit that Audra McDonald isn't the easiest act to follow. She acts the role well but her singing voice leaves much to be desired.
In short, this is easily the best revival of a musical that Broadway has seen since Doyle's Sweeney Todd. May it have a long life at the Neil Simon--I cannot wait to go back!
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 11/11/09 at 08:34 PM
