Perhaps
more than any other work, that of Stephen Sondheim not excepted,
Ragtime is an index of the ambition
of the contemporary American musical. Composer Stephen Flaherty,
lyricist Lynn Ahrens and scriptwriter Terrence McNally adapted E.L.
Doctorow’s sprawling 1975 novel about class, race and family in
early-20th-century America more expansively and with more explicit
attention to its themes than Milos Forman’s film version, yet also more
engagingly and – a rare achievement – more concisely than the movie.
After its 1998 Broadway première it has never had a conspicuously
successful revival, least of all in Britain (although a staging at the
little Landor Theatre in Clapham last year was much admired), but
Timothy Sheader has now made it the flagship musical production of this
year’s season in Regent’s Park.
I must admit that the first glimpse of the set put me on my
guard. Sheader enjoys commissioning stage designs that are
radically at odds with the bucolic serenity of the Open Air Theatre;
this time, designer Jon Bausor has constructed a derelict concrete
hummock filled with much of the detritus of the last century or so of
Americana. A crass Ground Zero symbolism might be intended, but as the
cast gradually shift from contemporary working-class clothing to period
costumes for the principal action, the threat of such tub-thumping
recedes. Besides, this is already a piece whose emblematic characters
include J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford and
Harry Houdini (who, in the person of Stephane Anelli, escapes from a
straitjacket whilst hanging by his feet from the real, large crane that
towers over the stage).
The main action weaves amongst three families, one WASP, one black, the
third Latvian-Jewish immigrant. The opportunities offered by America
and its sometimes ruthless racism sound equally strongly, and with as
much relevance to today; as bigoted small-town firemen made monkey
noises at ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr, I could not help but
remember that a news story had broken bare hours earlier that such
hideous mockery is still common amongst football crowds in Euro 2012
co-host the Ukraine. As regards Flaherty’s show-stopping numbers, too,
the press-night audience seemed (wrongly, in my view) much more
restrained in their reception for Coalhouse (Rolan Bell)’s fervent
“Make Them Hear You” than for Mother (Rosalie Craig)’s rather bellowy,
more personal than political “Back To Before”. But this is a production
which overall matches its material in scope and audacity, and pretty
much in success as well.
Written for the Financial
Times.