By James Scarborough Gazette Theater Writer
'Ragtime' Provides Substance, Style

The Gilded Age was not a kinder, gentler age compared to ours, but it certainly brimmed with more brio, style, and, most of all, syncopation.

And brio style, and syncopation are what you're going to get with Musical Theatre West's brilliant and rousing production of "Ragtime," directed and choreographed by Paul David Bryant, with music by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, based on E. L. Doctorow's novel of the same name.

Bryant's production is larger than life. His achievement was to keep the song and dance numbers from overwhelming the story.

He succeeded wildly - it entertained, it told a story, it offered up moral teachings and gave us a history lesson. Think "Sesame Street" for the Gilded Age.

The cast numbers 50 people, often all on the stage at one time, singing, dancing, exalting, decrying, promoting, denying. Ragtime music itself is the perfect vehicle for this romp through an era in which America began to stretch its politico-economic muscle.

This is the musical theater equivalent of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation:" crowd scenes fill the stage, hordes of humanity enact their various destinies, spectacle and history intermingle.

But this is not just a Fourth of July jingoistic fete. "Ragtime" also reminds us of the dark side of capitalism and democracy, namely, assembly line slavery, haves and have-nots, and racism.

I like the way the story weaves larger-than-life historical personalities into the lives of plain folk. This intersection elevates daily life to the status of spectacle, and in turn lends the story verisimilitude, depth and breadth.

That's the charm of the whole production. Scandal, celebrity, love triangles, rags to riches, riches to rags, murder and racism - all those things we think run so rampant now have been around for at least a century. They were just never so beautifully set to music and dance.

The story consists of three stories, each of which intersects and ricochets off of each other in a syncopated manner, propelled by justice/injustice, freedom/slavery, boom/bust, celebrity/obscurity, all embedded in history and brought to life.

The first story is about a family - Father (Doug Carfrae), Mother (Victoria Strong) and Mother's Younger Brother (Matthew Rocheleau) that has made a fortune selling fireworks and bunting, all the things with which we celebrate our patriotism.

The second is about Tateh (Eric Anderson), a penniless immigrant and his motherless daughter (Becky Golden) who make it big in a spectacularly unexpected way.

Anderson makes his transformation from silhouette-maker into movie mogul as believable as it was unexpected.

The third involves Coalhouse Walker (David Jennings), a ragtime musician who sought without success to do the right thing and raise his bastard son. Jennings brought heart to the ragtime music he played, but to no avail.

The play runs until March 6. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday with an added 7 p.m. performance this Sunday.

Tickets are $20-47. The Carpenter Center is located at 6200 Atherton, on the California State University, Long Beach, campus.

For details, call 856-1999 ext. 4

2/25/2005

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