RAGTIME JOURNEYS ON By Peter Filichia
In case we needed a reminder that RAGTIME is magnificent, the new production at Lincoln Center proves it.
Many musical theater aficionados have known its worth for almost 30 years. There aren’t many scores that are recorded months before the show has an announced opening, but RAGTIME is one of the handful.
In 1996, some months before the musical version of E.L. Doctorow’s novel would head respectively to Toronto, Los Angeles and Broadway, the cast that director Frank Galati had assembled came into the studio and did a one-disc recording.
That had those aficionados raving about the jaunty title song, the stirring anthems and the funny comedy tunes, too. Composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens certainly honored Doctorow’s characters, providing appropriately klezmer-tinged melodies for the Jews, foursquare ones for the WASPS, and no less than genuine ragtime for the Blacks. THE MUSIC MAN’s Harold Hill maintained that ragtime was “shameless music.” Not in this case.
The single disc whetted appetites for the musical that would be the first attraction at The Ford Center (a theater that has now had more names than Andrew Lloyd Webber has had wives). For many listeners, it either started or cemented their appreciation for Brian Stokes Mitchell (as Coalhouse Walker, Jr.), Audra McDonald (his girlfriend Sarah) and Marin Mazzie (Mother, Sarah’s savior).
And yet, as fine as that album is, the two-disc set of the Original Broadway Cast that was released in 1998 was, well, twice as good.
Ten years ago, after an NYU production, I conducted a post-play discussion with Flaherty and Terrence McNally, the musical’s bookwriter.
McNally reported that when he was sought to adapt Doctorow’s “historical fiction,” he read it in a single day and immediately signed on. However, he wanted to have a say in who’d provide the score: “I told the producer, ‘Don’t just find people who’ve won 85 Tonys or just as many Oscars. Get anyone who wants to write the score to send in songs on spec on a cassette.’”
Eight eventually arrived in McNally’s mailbox. “As I requested, they didn’t have the names of any of the writers,” he recalled. “They were Tape A through Tape H. I loved Tape F best, and everybody agreed.”
“F” as in Flaherty and Ahrens, as it turned out. The four songs they offered were “Ragtime,” which introduced those three major groups of characters; “Till We Reach That Day,” an anthem of hope in the face of Sarah’s needless murder; and “Gliding,” in which Tateh, the Jewish immigrant, soothes his young daughter’s fears by showing her a book of silhouettes that would be the first step in his film-making career. He literally goes from rags to riches because of a native talent he knows how to use; Tateh seizes his opportunities and Makes Something of Himself.
The fourth song was “You Don’t Know,” for then-famous beauty Evelyn Nesbit, whose husband Harry K. Thaw was so jealous of her former lover architect Stanford White that he shot and killed the man. The song was replaced by “Crime of the Century,” which this murder was said to be, although in the musical, activist Emma Goldman smartly pointed out that the century still had 94 years to go.
Before Flaherty revealed the names of his four RAGTIME audition songs, I asked the audience to guess what they were. Some said “Wheels of a Dream” while others assumed “Make Them Hear You.”
Both belonged to Coalhouse. “Wheels” had the Black pianist initially show Sarah his belief in the American dream. Audience members reveled in their happiness after seeing their complicated past. Coalhouse had abandoned her; Sarah had abandoned their child. Eventually there was forgiveness, and love was restored. That audiences saw what they’d endured gave the tragedies both would face a greater impact.
Some ignoramuses let Coalhouse know they didn’t want the American Dream applied to him, and they vandalized his automobile. How quickly good fortune and life can be taken away; that’s America, too. Sarah was murdered when trying to help him, causing Coalhouse’s rampage in order to “Make Them Hear You.”
And yet, most in that NYU audience assumed that one of the chosen four songs was “Back to Before,” Mother’s declaration of independence. That’s what I would have thought, for is there a greater character in any Broadway musical than she? Many a woman in 1906 would panic at the thought of her husband’s deciding to leave her and her young son, for a year-long journey to the North Pole. Mother doesn’t balk at the challenge.
Little did Mother know that she’d soon have the added responsibilities of caring for two more people who’d come into her life. Few ever have as monumental a decision to make as the one Mother has when she finds a Black newborn boy in her backyard; when the police find Sarah, the child’s mother, Mother could have had both carted away and never given them another thought, as many in her position – and her husband – would have done.
Instead, Mother feels for the two unfortunates, tells the police she’ll be responsible, and takes both into her home without worrying what the neighbors will think (in a time when everyone worried what the neighbors thought). Here’s where Mother shows that she doesn’t have a prejudicial bone in her body, especially remarkable in an era when her peers had 206 of them.
Mother has the experience that many wives have had when their dominant husbands leave or die: they now have the chance to think for themselves, make decisions and come into their own. This added strength was much in evidence when Father returned; Mother didn’t abandon Sarah or her child, which he would have preferred.
Later, when Coalhouse became a terrorist, Father – furious and frightened – rebuked his wife for her “foolish female sentimentality.” Mother stayed resolute as she was falling out of love with him, which led to her staunch proclamation that they could never go “Back to Before.”
To many musical theater enthusiasts, Thaw’s 1906 murder of White was not “The Crime of the Century”; RAGTIME’s losing the Best Musical Tony to THE LION KING was. When a show wins Best Book and Best Score, as RAGTIME did, shouldn’t it win Best Musical, too? Alas, the spectacle of THE LION KING is what gave it the prize.
Helen Doctorow, who was married to the novelist 61 years until his death, was a fan of the musical because it kept to one of her spouse’s beliefs: “A history book can tell you what happened,” she quoted. “A novel can tell you how it felt.”
RAGTIME indeed does – and continues to at Lincoln Center through January 4, 2006 – at the very least.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon and The Drama Book Shop.
