‘Ragtime’ may be set more than 100 years ago, but it’s still relevant

Imagine a tale of racial tension and a controversial police shooting. Imagine stories of class warfare and the quest for gender equality, of rapid technological change and an immigrant family’s struggle to find its place in America.

It might sound like an average day in 2016, but those are the themes of “Ragtime,” a musical set in the early 1900s.

Based on E.L. Doctorow’s sprawling, best-selling, 1975 novel, the show is set to run this week at the Kauffman Center.

“Ragtime” explores the seemingly never-ending tension between America’s glittering promise and sometimes ugly reality.

Also? It has a bunch of pretty songs.

“Ragtime” has an unusual past. The musical originally ran on Broadway in 1998, the inaugural production in the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.

A critical success, “Ragtime” earned 13 Tony Award nominations and took home four of the statues, including best book for author Terrence McNally, and best original score for the songwriting team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. The original cast was a dazzler, too, including Audra McDonald, who won best actress.

Despite its Tony-winning ways, however, that first Broadway production was not a huge financial success. The show ran for just two years, closing after about 850 performances. One reason may have been the lavish, $11 million production budget, with glitzy elements like onstage fireworks and a working Model T.

Nearly a decade later “Ragtime” was reborn at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and eventually made it back to Broadway in 2009.

Director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge helmed the revival, becoming the first woman to direct a major musical produced at the Kennedy Center.

She stripped the show of budget-busting clutter, flash and spectacle, allowing the characters and their stories to more fully shine through. That staging is what Kansas City audiences are set to see, including an innovative, pavilion-like set designed by Kevin Depinet and augmented with digital projections by Mike Tutaj.

Milgrom Dodge said the biggest challenge in mounting a nationally touring production of this show was the size.

“How could I create the physical production and fit it into two trucks without compromising the scope and scale of this epic story?” she said. Luckily, her design team was “very clever in finding creative ways to do just that.”

Certainly, though, the show is no small undertaking. Including management and parents for the show’s child actors, the touring company boasts 40 people.

Set in and around New York City, “Ragtime,” drips with American history. The story interweaves the lives of three fictional families with the doings of real historical figures.

In the pastoral haven of New Rochelle, we meet our protagonists: Mother, Father, Mother’s Younger Brother, Grandfather and her Little Boy. They’re a genteel clan of upper-crust white Protestants.

In Harlem, we find Coalhouse Walker Jr., a gifted, Scott Joplin-esque African-American musician who’s crazy in love with his girlfriend, Sarah. Down on the Lower East Side, by way of Ellis Island, we meet Tateh (Yiddish for “father”) and his Little Girl, a pair of struggling Jewish immigrants from Latvia.

These three families and their wildly disparate worlds collide, facilitated by the movers and shakers of the day.

At times, in fact, “Ragtime” feels like a pageant of American history, with appearances by business barons J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford, explorer Robert Peary, and social activists such as Booker T. Washington and Emma Goldman. Even Harry Houdini shows up.

Beyond the drama and history, the show is beloved by fans simply for its music. With soaring, florid, Puccini-like melodies, the score is one of Ragtime’s biggest draws. “Back to Before,” sung by the Mother character, is a proto-feminist anthem.

The aspirational “Wheels of a Dream” articulates the profound connection in the American psyche between cars and success. The haunting, brooding “ ’Till We Reach That Day” speaks to the struggle for racial equality. A politically charged number, “The Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square,” could almost describe a Bernie Sanders rally today.

Staged more than 100 years after the era it describes, “Ragtime” remains strikingly relevant. A story of social unrest, racial tension, female empowerment and immigrant aspiration in a time of emerging technology, “Ragtime” shows us how far we have come in a century.

Just as importantly, the show demonstrates just how far we still have to go.

▪ Theater League presents “Ragtime,” Tuesday through Sunday at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $69-$85 through TheaterLeague.com.

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 3:14 PM with the headline "‘Ragtime’ may be set more than 100 years ago, but it’s still relevant."