Review: Ragtime by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
The Zach's Ragtime is a huge -- I mean HUGE -- and lavish production, inaugurating its state-of-the-art 425-seat Topfer theatre. The flair, finish and finesse of this production are simply breath-taking.
Ragtime is a fable of a faraway America, one that existed at the very opening of the twentieth century. In his 1975 novel E.L. Doctorow imagined a tangled story involving a prosperous bourgeois family in New Rochelle, an unmarried African-American couple and their child, and an impoverished Jewish immigrant peddler and his young daughter in the New York slums.
The story is told in an amusing faux-historical narrative with cameos by real figures notable and notorious, ranging from escape artist Harry Houdini to Henry Ford to polar explorer Robert Peary to Evelyn Nesbit, infamous in the love triangle that led to the murder of architect Stanford White.
Miloš Forman turned Ragtime into a 1981 film featuring Randy Newman's clever and gently nostalgic score. Although the story is set principally in a small town upstate and in New York City, somewhat ironically the 1996 musical was underwritten by Canadian empresario Garth Drabinsky and first produced in Toronto. The music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens sweep the audience away.
Ragtime is a dream epic, a late twentieth-century imagining of how it should have been possible to overcome the differences between races and ethnic groups. It's imbued with an optimism of America's possibilities, even as it depicts setbacks.
While the wealthy owner of a fireworks factory is away on a polar expedition, his wife discovers an abandoned black newborn child in the garden. She takes it in along with Sarah, its despondent mother; professional musician Coalhouse Walker, Jr., drives up from Harlem every week, trying to speak to Sarah, and the family accepts him. The courteous and well-dressed outsider even becomes a music tutor to Edgar, the son. In an unfortunate encounter, white thugs beat Coalhouse and trash his automobile. Police and courts deny him justice; police brutality causes a death; Coalhouse and his armed followers occupy the J.P. Morgan library in New York City. Conflicts are sharp; dilemmas are insoluble. The New Rochelle family becomes involved and members learn different, difficult lessons.
Rich voices and orchestrations pour forth from the Topfer stage, accompanied by a 15-member orchestra led by Zach regular Allan Robertson. The musicians are mostly out of sight, down in the covered pit, with only the top of Robertson's head and his sweeping baton occasionally visible. Music and lyrics feature cakewalks, rags, ballads, marches and arias, reflecting the turn-of-the-century setting. Characters are larger than life and so are the yearnings expressed in their numbers -- particularly Kyle Scatliffe and Kia Dawn Fulton in On The Wheels of A Dream in Act I (click for rehearsal video) and Sarah Brown Eyes in Act II, and Blackwood's solos What Kind of Woman in Act I and Back to Before in Act II.
Steakley uses a cast of almost 40 adults, accompanied by a number of child performers. The ingenious Nick Demos choreographs dance and movement with such extensive imagination that you could watch these numbers over and over again, always picking up something new and striking.
Susan Branch Towne costumes the bourgeois family in genteel white summertime clothing. Though theirs is an individual story, except for Edgar the son they carry generic names: 'Grandfather,' 'Father,' 'Mother,' and 'Mother's Younger Brother.' Zach regulars David R. Jarrot, Jamie Goodwin, Jill Blackwood and Andrew Cannata appear in those roles.
The African-American cast is led by the young but towering and impressive Kyle Scatliffe as Coalhouse Walker, Jr. Chief in the huddle of immigrants is Andrew Foote as Tateh the peddler.
Both Scatliffe and Foote were recruited from elsewhere. Scatliffe graduated from a New York theatre school in 2010 and has performed mostly along the east coast. Foote is also from the east and has played the role of Tateh with the national touring company of Ragtime. Both have worked on cruise lines. They're eloquent and impressive performers.
Other than those two, the Ragtime cast is essentially home grown. It features Zach regulars, of course -- Goodwin and Blackwood, Meredith McCall as the socialist Emma Goldman, Cannata, garlanded African American performers Janis Stinson, Felicia Dinwiddie and Roderick Sanford, Tyler Jones and Jennifer Young Mahlstedt from the Xanadu cast, and David Jarrott.
But with so many roles to fill, the net was cast much more widely. It brought in Bob Beare of Trinity Street Players, UT MFA students Dan Lendzian and Geoffrey Barnes, Georgetown Palace alumni Steve Williams and Ann Pittman, Aline Mayagoitia of McCallum Fine Arts Academy and recruits from the Zach's youth training programs Benjamin Roberts and Brooke Silverstein. And many more.
Michael Raiford's set appears at first glance to be a simple concept with extended balcony-like platforms on either side of the stage. The tricks and traps of the Kuykendahl stage astonish, however. Mobile units run across the back of the stage, suggesting a ship or creating a third balcony. A nightclub piano rises from beneath center stage and a full-sized and convincing mock-up of a roadster rolls on from stage left. Jason Amato's lighting design keeps our attention focused on the action while richly evoking emotion. Those expanses of scrim at deep stage glow with color and carry subtle video effects by Collin Lowry, and for the Atlantic City number in Act II the set comes alive with synchronized bulbs in a manner more reminiscent of 1970's Las Vegas.
It's a big production for a big new theatre, one that says, loud and proud, that 'Austin's theatre' offers a level of artistic and technical excellence as good as any in the country. Ticket prices are generally higher for this production than audiences have previously seen at the Zach, but ticket revenue can scarcely begin to recover the resources that the theatre has expended on overhead, talent and production values. So dig a little deeper, purchase your tickets, and go immerse yourself in Ragtime.
The achievement of the Zach management and the many donors led by Mort and Bobbi Topfer is on a par with that of Joe and Teresa Long and those who contributed to the renovation of the Long Center, inaugurated in 2008. A theatre like this was planned originally for the Long Center but dropped when the project encountered funding difficulties. It's too bad we had to wait for it -- but now we'll have the pleasure of seeing the Zach strive to make its performances match the excellence of its new venue.
Review by Jeff Davis for www.austin.broadwayworld.com, October 27
Review by Robert Faires for the Austin Chronicle, November 1
Feature by Shelley Seale at at www.austin.culturemap.com, November 11
EXTRAS
Ann Pittman writes on the relevance of Ragtime, October 16
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Ragtime
by Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty.
Zach Theatre
