Ragtime music is propulsive and infectious. It is sharp, direct and clear. It has sense, purpose and style. So does the Goodspeed Musicals‘ production of “Ragtime.” It’s an engrossing, involving and invigorating rendition of a show that’s important to revisit right now.
E.L. Doctorow’s landmark novel was turned into a musical by playwright Terrence McNally, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens — a trio beloved in Connecticut for selecting Hartford Stage as the venue for tryouts of their “Anastasia” in 2016. The Goodspeed’s “Ragtime” is happening just as an unrelated New York production of the same musical that played off-Broadway last year has announced it will transfer to Broadway later this year.
There’s room for many “Ragtime” musicals — it has had a previous Broadway revival in 2009, a couple of important London productions and some ingenious concert versions and the novel was also adapted for a 1981 film directed by Milos Forman. The Goodspeed “Ragtime” has the advantage of being staged in a theater building that was built in the 1870s, ideal for a show set at the turn of the 20th century.
The show starts calmly with the dapper musician Coalhouse Walker Jr. astride his piano bench, playing a gentle, lilting ragtime melody. As the music gets a bit louder and fiercer — pumped out by a band that lands sensibly between a raw jazz style and a more refined music theater showtune vibe — men in white suits and women in white dresses promenade down the Opera House aisles and onto the stage.
We are introduced to the main characters, and there are many of them. The African-American community is represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr. and his followers in the Harlem music clubs. There’s a Jewish immigrant named Tateh and his daughter. There’s a well-to-do white suburban family (a father, mother and son plus the mother’s rebellious brother) who have a fine home in New Rochelle just outside the city. There are other character help creates links among these disparate groups, namely a young mother named Sarah who we learn shares a past and a destiny with Coalhouse Walker Jr. and is befriended by the New Rochelle family.
Theatrical window dressing and historical context are provided by some of the greatest celebrities of the early 20th century: Magician Harry Houdini, anarchist Emma Goldman, scandalous vaudeville star Evelyn Nesbit and the great orator/educator Booker T. Washington.
These communities rub up against each other constantly and iterally since “Ragtime” now holds the record for the largest cast ever assembled on the not very large Goodspeed Opera House stage with around 30 energetic performers, including several children.
Christopher Betts, who has previously graced Connecticut stages with dynamic productions of Katori Hall’s “Hot Wing King” and Alice Childress’ “Trouble in Mind” at Hartford Stage and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “Choir Boy” at Yale Repertory Theatre, carefully fits “Ragtime” into the Goodspeed. The play bursts with a collective energy, but the actors don’t get in each other’s way. There’s clarity and purpose in the movement, building momentum for a complex story of a still-young nation struck with new challenges.
There are some false notes. Mia Gerachis doesn’t evoke a credible vaudeville style as Nesbit, seeming out of place against the more resonant ragtime and parlor song routines. The other celebrity impersonations fit in better but have their own quirks. Blair Goldberg makes Goldman seem almost sexy while Jonathan Cobrda adds a creepiness to Houdini that brings to mind his Rooster Hannigan in a multi-year tour of “Annie” around a decade ago.
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Casting the ensemble members in multiple roles may be necessary but it can also be distracting. The distinctive looking Stephen Tewksbury, for example, plays a goofy grandfather, a racist fireman and a guy enjoying a baseball game and is good at all three yet you can’t get that evil fireman out of your head anytime Tewksbury is onstage.
Edward Watts (Harold Hill in “The Music Man” for Goodspeed in 2019) gives a curious portrayal of Father, the patriarch of the New Rochelle family who is also an amateur Arctic explorer. Father is certainly meant to be somewhat clueless and chauvinist and old-fashioned, oblivious to important cultural changes afoot in America, but Watts exaggerates this clean-cut pomposity into something that resembles a “Dudley Do-Right” cartoon. It gets even more out of hand when Father returns from a North Pole expedition sporting a beard that looks more like he’s glued a stiff broom to his face.
Yet the size and scope and clarity of this musical overcome any issues you might have with any single performer. Besides, the performances that truly matter here — Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker Jr., Brennyn Lark as Sarah and Mamie Parris as Mother — are stellar.
Worldly can shift from sweet to severe as needed, depending on whether he’s holding a baby or standing up for his civil rights. His extraordinary singing voice is more than matched by Lark in their stirring duets. Betts stages the couple’s romantic embrace, an interaction that’s as important to “Ragtime” as the balcony scene is to “Romeo and Juliet” with suspenseful pacing and grand physicality, a swirling burst of poetry in motion that has the audience cheering and nearly stops the show. This one moment registers so strongly that it feels like the appropriate place to end the first act, though there’s still several scenes and songs to come before intermission in this very full three-hour production.
Parris expertly builds her character through numerous short exchanges with other characters that collectively show Mother’s compassion and moral principles, making her culminating solo number “Back to Before” that much stronger.
Another character we see face adversity which maintaining a confident inner core is the Latvian immigrant Tateh. David R. Gordon gives Tateh a lightness and effervescence that helps balance the more soulful suffering of other characters. There is no lack of comic relief in this “Ragtime,” including some well-timed quips from 12-year-old Sawyer Delaney in the critical youngest-generation role of Little Boy. Behr Marshall, a Hartt School grad who was a standout performer a few months ago in the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals, is one of the more dour characters in “Ragtime” as the insolent activist Little Brother, but his seriousness actually makes him a little funny.
“Ragtime” has a dramatic intensity and shadowy nuances that are rarely seen on the Goodspeed Opera House stage, though it could be argued that, with recent productions like “Anne of Green Gables” and “The 12,” there’s a clear desire for the theater to be attempting deeper, more layered work in general.
The musical is set over a century ago but speaks directly to contemporary issues without mincing words like “racism,” “immigration,” “deportation,” “terrorism” and “revolution.” Characters exclaim “What is wrong with the country?” and “You have traveled everywhere and learned nothing.” Several worlds intersect onstage. The show itself covers a lot of artistic ground. It’s a 1996 musical based on a 1975 bestselling novel with a singular clipped and crisp literary style, set in a turn-of-the-century time of endless exploration and imagination wrapped in coarse social realities.
“Ragtime” runs through June 15 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam. Performances are on Wednesdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 and 6:30 p.m., plus 2 p.m. Thursday matinees on May 29, June 5 and 12. There are no Sunday evening performances on June 1, 8 and 15. $35-$114. goodspeed.org.
