Ragtime @ New York City Center

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The Play: Ragtime; an Encores! concert version of the 1996 musical based on E.L. Doctorow’s award-winning novel about three families—upper-class WASPs, Jewish immigrants and striving African Americans—struggling to realize the American Dream at the turn of the last century 

Score by: Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens      Book by: Terrence McNally      Directed by: Lear DeBessonet

Two good things: Both Joshua Henry as the proud Black musician Coalhouse Walker and Brandon Uranowitz as the ambitious Jewish artist Tateh are terrific in roles that each has long dreamed of playing

One not-so-great thing:  Doctorow’s original mixture of fact and fiction included such real-life figures as automaker Henry Ford, socialist activist Emma Goldman, magician Harry Houdini and educator Booker T. Washington but their connections to the story and its main themes gets a little lost in this production

 


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