RAGTIME MADE US HEAR IT By Peter Filichia
Masterworks Broadway has two ways to whet your appetite for the upcoming presentation of RAGTIME at Encores!
The last great musical of the 20th century will play October 20 through November 10 at City Center. That it’s the biggest house in the theater district is fitting for a musical that requires the largest of canvases.
Lucky for us that bookwriter Terrence McNally, lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and composer Stephen Flaherty painted it to perfection.
Their achievements, of course, wouldn’t have happened without E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel. He showed WASPs, Jews and Blacks who were extraordinarily wary and fearful of the other two ethnicities. By show’s end, members from all three have merged into at least one happy family.
Very few Broadway musicals ever had the recording experience that RAGTIME had. Bill Rosenfield, the cast album guru of his day, was so enthusiastic about the score that in July 1996 – five months before the musical would even start its tryout in Toronto – he brought the already signed cast into the studio to record “Songs from RAGTIME.”
Notice “Songs from,” for the recording wouldn’t feature the entire score. Some of the songs were truncated, too. But in the great show business tradition, it left us wanting more.
So, if you only have an hour to spare to refresh your memory of RAGTIME before Encores!, play the album that eventually became unofficially known as “RAGTIME Lite.”
Fourteen months later, musical theater fans would hear what they’d been missing. The original Broadway cast did a second recording that required two discs. In comparison to the first album’s 21 tracks, the new recording accommodated that many alone on its first disc, with a title song that was three times longer. Sixteen more songs followed on Disc Two.
Sharp-eared RAGTIME vets quickly noted changes. Judy Kaye, the former Tony winner for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (and a future one for NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT) was now in the cast. She portrayed Emma Goldman, the political activist who one night spoke at Union Square and inspired many to take action against the establishment, including Younger Brother. (RAGTIME’s important WASPs were generically named.)
Every musical loses a song or two along the way, and by RAGTIME’s arrival on Broadway, audiences weren’t hearing “The Show Biz” as they had on “RAGTIME Lite,” sung by Harry Houdini (Jim Corti) and Evelyn Nesbit (Lynette Perry). The former celebrity’s name still resonates, even 150 years after the master magician’s birth. The latter, however, had a short-lived theatrical fame – a shooting star who inspired one of her two lovers to shoot the other.
True, there have been many shows songs that are cut because they stink (Exhibit A: “I Fell in with Evil Companions” from HER FIRST ROMAN), but that isn’t the case here. Longtime fans of Ahrens and Flaherty would argue that the team has seldom if ever written a bad song. Here, his purposely lackadaisical melody manages to be as funny as her lyrics.
McNally inadvertently got Ahrens and Flaherty the job. When producer Garth Drabinsky hired McNally to adapt Doctorow’s novel, he was surprised by the book writer’s unusual request.
Said McNally, “I told him not to just find people who’ve won 85 Tonys or just as many Oscars. Get anyone who wants to write the score to send in songs on spec on a cassette.”
(We can see just how long ago this was by McNally’s asking for a cassette.)
Eight eventually arrived in McNally’s mailbox. “As I requested, they didn’t have the names of any of the writers,” he recalled. “They were Tape A through Tape H. I loved Tape F best, and everybody agreed with me.”
“F” as in Flaherty and Ahrens, as it turned out. Drabinsky made the phone call that Ahrens has never forgotten. “He said, ‘You got the job – but if you don’t give me everything I want, I’m going to fire you.’ That was our welcome call.”
McNally, who would win a Tony for Best Book, was far more encouraging. He could have condescendingly treated the songwriters, just from the vantage point that when he saw his first work produced on Broadway, Flaherty was still in his terrible twos.
However, McNally’s faith was not misplaced, for the team won the Best Score Tony for convincingly conveying these disparate characters. Despite being a Generation Xer, Flaherty composed traditional-sounding theater music. He gave audiences three different classes of people with three distinct musical voices for the early 20th century. He got it stirringly right, from each waltz to each bit of ragtime.
Care to guess the four numbers they submitted? I’d guess:
1 – The title song that shows the groups so near and yet so far apart.
2 – “Wheels of a Dream.” Coalhouse Walker, Jr.’s pride in his automobile was his tangible proof that this country keeps its promise that anyone, even a Black man, can succeed. When he sang this to his beloved Sarah and envisioned their bright future, audiences reveled in their happiness.
3 – “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.” Tateh, the Jew who emigrated in rags, also believed in the American Dream. Little did he know that his talent for innovation, which he haltingly called “moo… vies,” would result in his becoming a millionaire mogul film director.
4 – Let’s save this one for later.
As it turned out, I got one right: the title song. Let’s see how you did, for here’s what the pair submitted:
2 – “He Wanted to Say.” Emma Goldman told us what was on Younger Brother’s mind. Ahrens’ approach was one that Bertolt Brecht would have admired (and he was not an easy man to impress).
3 – “Gliding.” Tateh makes silhouettes to divert his young daughter’s fears about their new home. That he does them out of love does not mean that he won’t profit from them later.
4 – And then there was a song in which Emma Goldman watched Younger Brother sleeping. It came and went early in the process.
Before I reveal my fourth choice, let’s revisit what the writers often said when doing panel discussions. Each had a different notion of which character was the main one. McNally saw it as Younger Brother; Flaherty’s choice was Coalhouse, while Ahrens’ was Tateh.
With all due respect, isn’t the main character Mother? Has there ever been a more wonderful human being in musical theater than she?
Look at the facts: Mother, living a lovely and affluent life in New Rochelle, is gardening when she comes across a newborn “Negro child,” as such was called at the time. The police soon arrive with Sarah, the young woman they’ve placed in custody for abandoning her child.
The average WASP woman of her lofty station would have snarled, “Oh, get this filthy thing away from me!” Mother’s inclination instead was to provide for both mother and child without worrying what the neighbors will think.
(And this was at a time when everyone worried what the neighbors would think.)
No, Mother wouldn’t even be your average housewife today, let alone one who lived in 1906. She didn’t have a single prejudicial bone in her body when everyone around her had 206 of them. So, she stands up to the police and takes both unfortunates into her home.
Sarah certainly would have met a different fate if Father had still been around, but he had gone sailing to Antarctica. His year-long absence allows Mother, now on her own, the chance to find herself.
What she finds within herself is worth its weight in platinum. Late in the show, Younger Brother said, “I have always loved and admired her.” You and the rest of us, bro.
When Father returned, he rebuked her for her “foolish female sentimentality,” Mother stayed silent but resolute in showing that she was falling out of love with the rigid and unempathetic person she now knew him to be.
And that’s where my fourth selection comes in – when Mother sings that they could never go “Back to Before.” In this glorious 11 o’clock number, she displays an inner strength that she initially hadn’t known that she possessed – and she wasn’t going to abandon it now.
So, those who haven’t yet savored the wonders of this musical are invited to hear RAGTIME Lite or RAGTIME Complete. And come to Encores! Even if the trip rivals in length the one that Tateh took. To quote another Ahrens and Flaherty winner, “Journey on!”
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
