Director Frank Galati and choreographer Graciela Daniele succinctly bring together the three elements of the story - the WASPy inhabitants of New Rochelle, the ragtag Eastern European immigrants of the Lower East Side and the artistically percolating blacks of Harlem just before that neighborhood’s creative Renaissance. That quality is gloriously rendered in the musical’s opening number. Washington, unspooled with the easy grace of a Scott Joplin melody.
The intricate plot, mingling fictional characters with such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford and Booker T. The novel’s great achievement, like the music for which it’s named, lies in its deceptively airy style, a peerless melding of surface lightness and complex construction. For all of its haunting lyricism, Doctorow’s novel about American society - or, rather, societies - at the turn of the century (the last one) is almost entirely descriptive, with little of the dialogue demanded by the stage. Granted, book writer Terrence McNally had a difficult job. (or Toronto, where the New York production began), surely this is the main reason: “Ragtime,” for all of its skill and polish, is a musical easier to admire than love, its plentiful, rich characters more often than not seeming as distant as the era they inhabit.
If box office hasn’t been as strong in L.A. Despite the tinkering, the three-hour “Ragtime” remains a long-winded affair, bloated and more than a little self-important. Whether the three-hour show can keep patrons from fidgeting in those roomy seats is another matter.
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