Ragtime (musical)

Ragtime is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow.

Set in the early 20th century, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in the United States: African Americans, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; upper-class suburbanites, represented by Mother, the matriarch of a white upper-class family in New Rochelle, New York; and Eastern European immigrants, represented by Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia. The show also incorporates historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, Admiral Peary, Matthew Henson, and Emma Goldman.

Background

Doctorow's 1975 novel was well received, winning the first National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction among other accolades. The book used both fictional and historical characters in a story that treats the serious themes of class and race in America at the beginning of the 20th century. It follows a working class black family, a wealthy white family and an immigrant Jewish family. The character of Coalhouse Walker is based, in turn, on Michael Kohlhaas, a novella by Heinrich von Kleist about a 16th-century working class German, who is persecuted by a wealthy and powerful man, and his unsuccessful efforts to gain justice. Doctorow's tale was adapted as a 1981 film directed by Miloš Forman.

Livent, then led by Garth Drabinsky, acquired the rights to adapt the novel for the stage by 1994; it produced Kiss of The Spider Woman, which premiered in Toronto, Canada, in 1992 before moving to Broadway, and a lavish revival of Show Boat on Broadway in 1994.