Sometimes—and it doesn’t happen very often—theater can move
you like nothing else. It can lift you up, fill you with joy and despair, take
you out of yourself and transform you with its ephemeral power. It can do all
this in an instant, with a moment, with a turn of a phrase, the sound of a
note, the unison voice of forty singers… the soaring beauty of a musical like
RAGTIME.
Company Theatre’s radiant production of the Ahrens & Flaherty
masterpiece (book by Terrence McNally from the sprawling E. L. Doctorow novel)
moved a whole audience as if we were one being—with its rousing promise of
opportunity at the turn of the century. (WWII lies ahead but only one character
in RAGTIME knows that.) Alas, RAGTIME, at this time in this century, resonates
for quite another (horrifying) reason.
The musical contrasts three segments of society to represent
the colliding, coalescing forces in the newly prosperous industrial nation:
Immigrants arriving, as the Emma Lazarus inscription pledges, to a welcoming
nation; African-Americans moving to America
When McNally/Ahrens/Flaherty wrote RAGTIME, they of course
had no idea that their portrait of an optimistic America would have us gasping
at a line about separating children from their parents, or interpreting a
depiction of police beating a woman to death as “living,” not “past” history,
or seeing the elated RAGTIME immigrants arriving on our shores, knowing that in
2018, they’d be turned away, reviled.
The beauty of directors Zoe Bradford and Jordie Saucerman’s spirited
production is that it contains this terrible resonance, yet it pulls us through
it to experience RAGTIME’s magnanimous story of hope and despair. Every
character stands out in relief in their production, punctuating the (many)
throughlines. (The Doctorow tome is four inches thick so McNally’s distillation
proves quite a feat.)
Sally Ashton Forrest’s choreography is a marvel of gestural
intricacy: The dancers become cogs in Henry Ford’s assembly line and they
become the syncopation within the bars of the ragtime rhythm. (Kudos to music
director Steve Bass for elevating the importance of the gorgeous score.
Sometimes it’s lost in the maelstrom.)
I’m recalling so many remarkable performances. I wish I could
highlight them all. First and foremost is Davron S. Monroe in a tour de force
as the ragtime pianist at the center of the musical. Next and foremost is Paula
Markowicz as the privileged but caring Mother. You expect the big production
numbers to wow but Markowicz brings down the house with her solo(s), especially
the song about not being able to go “Back to Before.”
You can’t have RAGTIME’s coping mother without a blustering
father and Peter S Adams captures the essence of a man who knows he’s lost and
can’t go backward in this burgeoning new world. (You don’t often see a
three-dimensional Father in other productions.) And you can’t have Monroe
More standouts: Sarah Kelly as a “real” character not just a
cipher (as the Girl on the Velvet Swing); the same with James Fernandes as
Houdini; Melissa Carubia, too, makes Emma Goldman a necessary part of the
story. Todd McNeel, Jr. is a strong Booker T. Washington; Mildred E. Walker’s
grieving soprano rises in flight over the mourners; Owen Veith, a fourth grader
no less, can hold his own with the pros as the “little boy” who warns us that
war is coming. Jeffrey Sewell gets the best line in the script and Hannah Dwyer
charms us as the frail daughter of Michael Hammond’s immigrant father.
Sometimes, and it doesn’t happen very often, you see a
one-of-a-kind, transcendent version of a favorite work and you realize that it
can’t be frozen (in film or smart phone video) or ever repeated with the same
cast. That’s the fleeting, magical nature of theater. You want to see it again.
You will see it again in your mind, over and over but you want others to see it
and feel the alchemy. Sadly, it’s gone. If only I hadn’t seen the very last
performance.