In recent years, Lear deBessonet has built a reputation for helming intuitive, imaginative, and richly entertaining productions of classics ranging from Shakespeare to Sondheim. As artistic director of New York City Center’s Encores!, she guided concert productions of *Into the Woods* and *Once Upon A Mattress* that transferred to Broadway after reaping rave reviews.
This fall marks Ms. deBessonet’s first season holding that title at Lincoln Center Theater. For her inaugural Broadway outing in that capacity, she has chosen another musical revival that premiered as part of Encores!: her staging of *Ragtime*. This adaptation of E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 historical novel had its New York premiere in 1998, featuring a score that put on the map the team of composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens. Their other works include *Once Upon This Island*, *Seussical*, and *Anastasia*.
Like the novel, which was also the basis for a 1981 movie, the musical *Ragtime* introduces us to a socially and racially diverse array of fictional characters living in and around New York City in the early 20th century. It also injects a similarly eclectic scattering of real-life figures among them, including Harry Houdini, Booker T. Washington, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, and the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit.
The focus is mostly on the made-up characters, including a prosperous white family living in New Rochelle, a Jewish immigrant named Tateh and his young daughter, and a Harlem-based Black musician, Coalhouse Walker Jr., and his initially estranged sweetheart, Sarah.
In the musical’s prologue, we meet the different groups they represent—first individually and then, after a few historical figures have appeared, as a mighty chorus. Before Ms. deBessonet brings that chorus together, she has members of each party stare at and circle each other on the vast stage cautiously and with some obvious awkwardness. The point is clear: however sweetly these performers may harmonize, the people they play and the country they represent are still struggling to form a more perfect union.
That struggle, relayed both in song and in a book by Terrence McNally—the late, long-celebrated playwright and librettist—can involve even the more privileged people we meet in *Ragtime*, like a young mother in that New Rochelle clan. Played by Caissie Levy, whose powerful voice and easy grace have served numerous Broadway productions, Mother (as she is simply identified, even by her husband) is both a devoted wife and a fiercely moral individual. Those elements come increasingly into conflict as her paths cross with other, less fortunate men and women.
Tateh faces a more dire predicament, at least at first. Wittily and movingly played by Brandon Uranowitz, another beloved veteran of plays and musicals, Tateh eventually finds success as a version of one of the Jewish strivers who created Hollywood. But that success comes only after deprivation and fear for his child’s safety drive him toward Emma Goldman, portrayed here almost too perfectly by Shaina Taub, fresh off her stint as creator and star of the preachy suffragist musical *Suffs*.
Ford and Morgan, respectively played here by Jason Forbach and John Rapson, are as slimily villainous as Goldman is stridently virtuous, with Morgan emerging as a vile bigot to boot. This contrast left me wondering—as I often do when seeing Broadway productions of musicals that wear populist messages like badges of honor—how many of those cheering in the orchestra section held positions at banks like those Morgan founded or at other multinational corporations.
Yet no one in *Ragtime* is subject to greater misfortune or more soul-shattering misery than Coalhouse or Sarah, played by Joshua Henry (another Broadway favorite) and Nichelle Smith. Their booming vocal performances, in solo numbers and duets, nearly stopped the show at the preview I attended.
Granted, Broadway audiences tend to be suckers for over-the-top singing, and as much as I admired Mr. Henry’s and Ms. Smith’s chops and the genuine, undeniable passion both brought to their roles, my favorite performance was Ms. Levy’s more measured, luminous reading of “Back to Before,” an eleven o’clock number in which Mother reflects on the passive role she has assumed in marriage and yearns for more agency.
Such relative introspection is, by design, rare in *Ragtime*. Ms. deBessonet and her cast, aided by a full orchestra under James Moore’s vigorous direction, capture its musical and historical sweep beautifully. If the material here isn’t as enchanting as that in some of Ms. deBessonet’s previous outings, it’s certainly timely and should inspire a lot of conversation after the curtain call.
https://www.nysun.com/article/ragtime-is-inaugural-broadway-outing-for-lear-debessonet-as-lincoln-center-theaters-new-artistic-director