The show's scale is something that couldn't have been dreamed
about in its old digs at the Newton Highlands church, which the company
left last spring. The 32 singers and eight-piece band would have filled
half the audience seats, never mind the stage.
The qualitative leap is even greater. Director Rick Lombardo
has room to show that the company isn't just a small theater on
steroids, but a legitimate midsize theater, only a notch below what the
Huntington Theatre Company and American Repertory Theatre can offer in
terms of stagecraft.
One of the great musicals of the last quarter-century,
''Ragtime" needs this kind of room to unfurl. The opening number, which
introduces the characters and themes, has WASP, Jewish, and black
characters move from a pageant-like processional in separate quarters
of the stage into a whirl that hints at both connection and
confrontation.
Composer Stephen Flaherty, lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and book
writer Terrence McNally mirror E. L. Doctorow's great novel, which
showed how idealism and disruption lived side by side at the turn of
the 20th century. A man who had it all could lose everything by his
inability to see the world changing. Another could lose everything by
insisting the world change on his timetable.
What distinguishes ''Ragtime" is how central music itself is
to these ambitious themes. Ahrens and Flaherty provide some of the most
gorgeous theater music since ''West Side Story" -- no more so than in
the melody of ''New Music," which sweeps the listener, and the
characters, into a world of new sounds and new sensibilities. For
progressive-minded characters, these sounds conjure a world of new
possibilities. For reactionaries, they signal threat.
The score itself is not really ragtime, but a pretty blend of
piano rags and Broadway showstoppers. And Lombardo has found the voices
to stop the show -- beginning with Leigh Barrett, who is luminous as
the mother of all Mothers. Barrett is such a strong yet humble presence
that she stands out as the musical's moral and musical center.
Mother and Father live lives of repressed conformity that are
shaken when she discovers a black baby in the garden. It had been left
there by Sarah, who couldn't face having an illegitimate child. Mother
takes the two of them in and pretty soon Coalhouse Walker Jr., the
baby's proud father, comesa-courting.
For the part of Sarah, a role made famous by Audra McDonald,
New Rep turned to Stephanie Umoh, an undergraduate at the Boston
Conservatory. And like other students at the school who've shined on
local professional stages, she's a dazzler. If this sophomore wants a
career in musicals, then Boston theaters should get in line.
As Coalhouse, Maurice E. Parent doesn't have
the vigorous personality of Brian Stokes Mitchell, the character's
originator, but who does? He has a full-bodied though not completely
trustworthy voice and his duet with Umoh on ''Wheels of a Dream" is
worth the price of admission.
The Jewish third of the story is the least successful in
''Ragtime." Both the music and the theme are cloying and
self-congratulatory. Tateh the immigrant isn't nearly as interesting as
the other three major characters, nor are his songs as good.
Given all that (not to mention a beard that looks like a
leftover from a community theater ''Fiddler on the Roof") Robert Saoud
is as likable a Tateh as I've seen. His voice isn't the most
complementary to Barrett's, but it has considerable sweetness and
strength.
Among those who help keep the large cast moving is Kelli
Edwards, whose stunning choreography includes witty riffs on the growth
of popular entertainment forms like vaudeville. On the other hand,
Janie E. Howland's set isn't much to look at. Apparently all the money
was spent on the cast and band because the stage consists mostly of
rolling platforms that serve a variety of purposes.
Lombardo, though, has supplemented the set design with Dorian
Des Laurier's artful selection of historical photos that are projected
overhead. It's always apparent in this ''Ragtime" that serious issues
coexist with the procession of personalities -- among them Houdini and
Emma Goldman -- who intersect with the main characters.
Yet the tunes that give ''Ragtime" staying power don't get
short shrift, especially in the first act, which includes the
''Ragtime" theme, ''New Music," ''Wheels of a Dream," and the gospel
finale ''Till We Reach That Day" (delivered in powerhouse fashion by
Dee Crawford). The second-act score is not nearly as strong.
<>Fortunately, there are singers onstage who can make the
sentimental sound stirring. At its core, ''Ragtime" is about the
struggle to make a home in a changing America. This ''Ragtime" shows
that the New Repertory Theatre has made the Arsenal Center into a
wonderful new home of its own.
© Copyright 2006 Globe
Newspaper Company.
