Sunday, September 05, 1999
Lavish 'Ragtime' portrait of an era
Aronoff Center to host musical
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
American innocence lost played to a syncopated beat can only be Ragtime, the stage musical as remarkably epic as the E.L. Doctorow novel on which it's based. It opens Wednesday for a three-week run at Aronoff Center's Procter & Gamble Hall, postponed from last season's Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series.
Published in 1975, Mr. Doctorow's book about the early years of this century blended fact and fiction to create a riveting social and political portrait of a nation that was ambitious, idealistic, inventive, naive, and chillingly intolerant.
Against a backdrop of real celebrities, scandals and world affairs, Ragtime follows the fortunes of three families: upper-middle-class WASPs, Jewish immigrants and Harlem blacks whose lives brush, then interweave.
In any other year, Ragtime would have swept Broadway's awards, but in 1998 its competition was a phenomenon called The Lion King.
Even so, playwright Terrence McNally's script consistently took home honors, as did the musical score by composer (and University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music alum) Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens.
Ragtime added up to three years of “what will hopefully be a long life as a composer,” Mr. Flaherty said by phone from Toronto, where he's working on the much-anticipated Seussical, due on Broadway in fall 2000.
As a Broadway composer, he notes, “You have to absolutely love the project you commit to because you're going to spend a great deal of your adult life working on it.”
Really a "storyteller'
For Ragtime, Mr. Flaherty took musical idioms — the blues piano of a Harlem saloon, Yiddish folk tunes, the so-popular rags of the era — and melded them to the larger arena of the traditional Broadway show tune. “I'm really a storyteller,” he says, “and music is my medium to tell stories.
“It was an exciting, fertile time for all of us,” Mr. Flaherty says. “It was a stretch on my part. I'd never attempted a large musical drama of this scope.”
With increasing numbers of stories about the decreasing size of Broadway tours, Ragtime only has lost a few cast members and will tour with a cast of 29.
“I've been involved in every step of every production,” Mr. Flaherty says. “Obviously it's very important to all of us to keep the integrity of the piece. It's not about one or two characters. It's about an era.”
"First learned' at CCM
Mr. Flaherty credits the show's rich choral sound to his early training at CCM. “My earliest vocal arrangements were for CCM's men's glee club. I first learned by listening to the great choruses at school.”
Despite rising production costs (and ticket prices) on Broadway and the road, Mr. Flaherty is confident that Ragtime isn't among the last of a dying breed of lavish, large-cast musicals.
No, he says, “the opportunity (to write one) doesn't come along often, but as long as audiences are compelled by good stories and big emotions there's a future for good musicals.”
For Seussical, which has “more of a pop feel than anything I've ever done,” Mr. Flaherty is enjoying “creating a world with a logic and musical logic all its own. I can do almost anything.”
Then again, he adds, Seussical “is a fun thing and a hard thing. So many Americans have personal associations with Dr. Seuss, it's a challenge to stay ahead of the audience.”
Cincinnati's stage struck
Critic's choices, week by week
Lavish 'Ragtime' portrait of an era
Cast of players on theater scene
Fireworks define four generations of Rozzis
Riverfest crowd guess pure fantasy
Can we feather our nests with Beanie Babies?
Bullies feed school violence
Parents teach ways to deflect tormentors
Tips for parents, students
Educators, parents speak out
Heimlich quits charter school board
Inside the house that Mike built
Voters scarce in local races
Wasps feeling feisty, not festive
Welfare to work: Success in human terms
Broadway supporters reduce debt
Bully sheriff has met his match
Democrats eye state Senate seat
Old-fashioned challenge to road checkpoints on target
Belated memorial at Kent State
Rhodes still troubled by youths' protests
Family might be movin' out for a piece of quiet
'Sabrina' star moves her career every witch way
Broadcasters group honors WEBN as 'station of year'
Dating doc 'Soup' server
GET TO IT
Radtke's 'Dream' catches eyes at fest
Telluride films focus on life, human content
Apartment building fire leaves families homeless
Bank to accept tax payments
Court to decide term limits
Disabled workers part of report
Drivers might be caught on camera
Florence Y'all fest distills fun
Golf tourney will aid organ-donation efforts
Justice center won't displace businesses
Magistrate follows up on domestic violence
Miami offers outdoor pursuits
Monroe CityFest offers crafts, food, fun
Old Timers Day draws Rabbit Hash revelers
Photographer of Reds dies
Republicans salivating over council possibilities
Soccer league asks parents to zip their lips
TRISTATE DIGEST
