November 21, 2009

Review roundup for 'Ragtime' revival on Broadway

A scaled-back but still grand revivial of the musical “Ragtime” opened on Broadway last week and was met with mostly positive reviews from the brand-name critics.

Based on the E. L. Doctorow novel steeped in Americana and set in the opening years of the 20th century New York, ths “Ragtime” features a 28-piece orchestra and a cast of 40 under the direction of Broadway newcomeer Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who also handles choreography.

The book is by Terrence McNally, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens. The cast includes Ron Bohmer, Quentin Earl Darrington, Christiane Noll, Robert Petkoff, Bobby Steggert, Stephanie Umoh, Christopher Cox and Sarah Rosenthal.

“Ragtime” has an open-ened run at the Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52nd St., map. Regular tickets are priced from $20 to $145. Premium seats are $300. Two hours before each show, $26.50 seats are available through a box-office lottery.

The reviews for “Ragtime” on Broadway:

Variety - “This is big-brain, bold-strokes musical-theater storytelling at its most vibrant.”

New York Times - “Still, Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s appealingly modest new interpretation, which originated at the Kennedy Center in Washington, often finds within this work’s panoramic sweep an affecting, uneasy human soul largely missing in the 1998 version. “

NY1 - “‘Ragtime’ is a sweeping, powerful musical about a restless period in our history. But it is also an intimate story about love, loss and growing up. It is this aspect, not the broad epic quality, that director Marcia Milgrom Dodge went after and, with this nearly flawless production, she has struck a most resonant chord. “

Post - “It’s about nothing less than the forces that shaped this country: immigration and risk-taking, racism and ingenuity, violence and generosity, upward mobility and inequality.”

Hollywood Reporter - “This wonderful musical based on the classic novel by E.L. Doctorow gets a much deserved, stirring revival.”

New York Observer - “Marcia Milgrom Dodge, in her first Broadway effort, directs and choreographs this simpler revival, and by paring back the overwhelming stagecraft, she allows ‘Ragtime’ to deliver a much bigger emotional punch.”

Time Out - “For in stripping away the trimmings—except Santo Loquasto’s beautiful costumes—this revival exposes the boom-time naïveté and sentimentality that always lurked in the musical’s soul.”

New Yorker - “Once ‘Ragtime’ passes into Flaherty and Ahrens’s hands, it becomes less a musical than a series of saccharine arias and duets that are made to carry most of the weight of exposition as well.”

Wall Street Journal - “Santo Loquasto’s resplendent costumes will be a shoo-in at Tony time. The cast is quite good but not breathtakingly so, which is more or less what I’d say about the production as a whole—though those who know the show only from the overblown, overdesigned 1998 Broadway production may well find this revival to be revelatory.”

Associated Press - “There is a lot of plot in ‘Ragtime,’ and playwright Terrence McNally has done a remarkable job in condensing the story without losing sight of the characters.”

Daily News - “But it’s hard to argue with a revival as surefooted as Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s strikingly staged and vividly performed redo.”

New York magazine - “And then there are the inherent problems of Doctorow’s novel, a puffed-out chest of a book that uses its characters as flattened symbols of racism, intolerance, hypocrisy, and disillusionment. It groans under its own lesson plan, and the musical follows suit.”

Bloomberg - “Even so, compared to what nowadays passes for a great musical (‘Wicked,’ for example), ‘Ragtime’ is nothing short of a masterpiece. “

Washington Post - “And yet in most important ways, director Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s economical staging retains the infectiously melodious appeal of the version that worked to such stimulating effect in the Eisenhower.”

USA Today - “As a work of social commentary, ‘Ragtime,’ introduced on Broadway in 1998, is hokey and pedantic, much like that other, plodding musical adaptation of historical fiction, ‘Les Misèrables.’ ‘Ragtime”s unabashed sentimentality is more compelling, though, thanks to the relative wit and grace of its creators.”

Newsday - “Finally, ‘Ragtime’ remains an ambitious, handsome, derivative piece that’s ultimately too pat to be the great American musical it so doggedly intends to be. Better this, however, than shows content with so much less.”

Related: Opening night pictures from Playbill.

See more reviews at Critc-O-Meter.

November 21, 2009 4:44 PM in Broadway, Midtown

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