Weather 
By Bill Hirschman
(Once again, Florida Theater On Stage is reviewing current shows playing this winter on and off-Broadway, many of which will be touring locally or mounted by a local company. Today, Ragtime, now slated to play through June with much of the cast with which it opened. Coming up this month, a review of Chess. We already reviewed Liberation; Oh, Mary; Little Bear Ridge Road, and Beau the Musical.)
Perhaps the ultimate triumph of theater is when you not only see yourself and your neighbors in front of you, but when you are absorbed inside so deeply that you are virtually a participant in the reality of whatever is happening on stage no matter how clearly theatrical.
In the superbly created heightened reality of the newest Broadway edition of Ragtime, not only are you inhabited by the seduction but you look around at the 1,000-plus compatriots in the auditorium and feel they are too.
The themes and message painfully are even more resonating 28 years after its premiere: racism, immigration, antisemitism, elusive justice, and the pursuit of dreams — at first with almost naïve hope and then with will tested by challenging experience. And change. So much about change.
This Broadway production is this critic’s fourth trip through this instructive history book come to life, and we have loved every one of them including the Broadway bow, but this one equals, even arguably surpasses all of them.
The huge on-stage populace fully realizes most of the late Terrence McNally’s insightful script based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 book. But the cadre elevates the pulsing, uplifting score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Aherns into a powerful, deeply moving swell that flows uninterrupted like an opera.
For the 17 of you who don’t already know, Ragtime charts three completely segregated groups in the greater New York City area circa the turn of the century.
— The well-off white suburbanite family: The Father (Colin Donnell) confident in the rightness of their status quo, the Mother (a breathtaking Cassie Levy) beginning to question her expected role, and the Younger Brother (Ben Levi Ross, also in the TV show Elspeth) trying to find the path of his future.
—An immigrant Jewish father Tateh (an equally stunning Brandon Uranowitz) struggling to find a foothold to support his daughter.
—Black piano performer Coalhouse Walker (the nearly legendary Joshua Henry) who wants to marry his pregnant lover Sarah (Nichelle Lewis).
Ragtime depicts as the three begin to interact — with some evolving, with some challenging, with varied results. Different arcs follow them as they reveal hopes and dreams and how they end in a time of cultural change. There is triumph, tragedy, achievements, losses. The work neither praises or condemns; it merely concedes change as an inescapable truism to be dealt with best by acknowledging it.
This is hardly a fairy tale: Some people make it through the crucible of the journey, some don’t. No one comes through without having evolved. By the finale, a far more complex future has begun.
The community is inhabited by the 19-member ensemble taking three and four roles, including real life characters such as Emma Goldman (Shaina Taub), Booker T. Washington (John Clay III, more about him later), Henry Ford (Jason Forbach), Houdini (Nick Barrington) and showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (Anna Grace Barlow). The array and size give you the sense of epic and scope and community
The huge stage at Lincoln Center is often without all but the essential props, suggestive drops and roll-on set pieces on the turntabled thrust stage. But director Lear DeBessonet (the new center artistic director) and choreographer Ellenore Scott brilliantly have arrayed 41 actors to create those three separate segregated groups and smoothly mixes them over time.
Aided by distinct costumes, evocative lighting and a masterclass orchestra led by James Moore, this experience envelops. And what every last artist does with the score is deliver both the thought and emotion with equal vocal force.
If you want a taste, watch Henry and Lewis performing Wheels of a Dream on the Stephen Colbert show. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qNP8bYc3scXXX) It is simply the most moving performance of that song we have ever heard.
Coalhouse is played by Henry (Burr in Hamilton), but we saw it at a matinee when he was not present; understudy Clay Henry III was as superb as anyone could ask for.
In the penultimate scene, the doomed activist Walker sings the direct challenge “Make Them Hear You” and the evening ends with a soaring repeat of “Wheels of a Dream.”
They are commanding, urging us in the audience to listen and learn – and act.
