Why did RAGTIME close? — Page 4

Bulldog, I respect your right to your opinion as to what shows are "masterpieces". Clearly my opinion includes "Ragtime" in that list. I've been a total fanatic of musical theater for 40 years and, along with "Follies", "Ragtime" is the best musical I have ever seen or heard. If I ever see anything better in what remains of my life, it will be something incredible.

---

'Lion King was a puppet show'.

Oh how clever. Just like Kukla, Fran and Ollie, right?

What is disturbing about this debate is not so much liking one over the other. It's the terms being bandied about. RAGTIME is a musical in the grand sense of AMERICAN musicals. LION KING uses many techniques from world theatre. Those who don't understand those techniques or appreciate their place in theatrical history deride them as 'children's theatre' or 'puppet shows'.

I can understand people not being moved by LION KING and being overwhelmed by RAGTIME. People have different opinions and different tastes, which is wonderful. But people who mock LION KING as a child's puppet show are isolationist in their tastes and are truly ignorant to the power of ancient forms of storytelling. Sad, really.

---

bdwybaby,

The original production was a mixing of two styles that never found a resolution. At moments, the staging strived for an alienating, Brechtian tone. At other times, it attempted pure musical drama in the vein of CAROUSEL. Do I think both can exist on a stage in the same production? I don't know. I just know that it didn't work in the original production. It straddled the line between a huge, American pageant and, other times, an intimate story about specific people. As a result, I feel character arcs were not drawn fully enough and also that the big American themes weren't big enough.

As I stated, there may very well be a production of RAGTIME that would make me feel emotionally connected. The Broadway production was not it.

---

Ultimately, I think Ragtime was an idea that didn't belong on the stage at all. I think the authors made a valiant attempt at adapting unabridgeable material but it required the singular talents and, most of all, brain power of a Sondheim or Jerry Robbins or Arthur Laurents or a Bernstein (particularly) to have translated the property from page to stage. Instead we got another (in the words of the brilliant UK critic, Mark Steyn)"non-hit hit," meaning it runs for a while but excites no one and never really finds an audience.

It's the general masses who didn't come, which is my point.