![]() Tateh's path crosses with Mother's several times in fact all of the characters in this story are connected somehow, and what each does affects the others.* Finally, at the center of our third family is a poor immigrant trying to make a better life for his daughter. Mother keeps the home fires burning while Father explores the world, and Younger Brother is on a journey all his own, always looking for something to cling to and finding it in unfortunate places (or persons). Curiously, these characters (with the exception of the son, Edgar) don't have names, so that they could be anyone or everyone. Sarah lives with the seemingly perfect well-to-do family consisting of a father, a mother, and a son, as well as mother's younger brother and father. Coalhouse's journey takes a drastic turn when he's faced with discrimination and tragedy. The hero of our story is Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a ragtime piano player in love with a poor servant named Sarah. The three families' lives become intertwined with each other, as well as with several historical events and figures, such as anarchist Emma Goldman, magician Harry Houdini, and chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit. Ragtime tells the story of three families - an upper class White family, an African American family, and an immigrant family. Director Peter Rothstein and his incomparable team of actors, singers, musicians, and designers have brought this story to life in a way that's aesthetically pleasing, highly entertaining and engaging, and most importantly, clearly delineates the parallels with our own world. When viewed through the lens of the present time, in which black men are repeatedly killed for no reason other than the color of their skin, the clothing they're wearing, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and businesses in our own small towns put up signs that say "no Muslims allowed," this already powerful story, beautifully told through words, characters, and music, becomes even more meaningful and important. Doctorow, Ragtime explores the tension that arose from the clash of cultures in New York City in the early 20th Century. ![]() Ragtime (book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens) deals with the two biggest social issues of the day - anti-immigrant sentiment and racism (not to mention issues of class and gender). More than twenty years later, "Ragtime" is still gorgeous.Theater Latte Da is opening their 19th season (and their first season in their new home, the Ritz Theater in NE Minneapolis, where they have been in residence for a few years but only recently purchased) with a Tony-winning musical written nearly 20 years ago, set 110 years in the past, that is perhaps the most timely and relevant musical for the America we're living in now. Some cuts are always necessarily (especially in a movie as sprawling as this), yet that cut - and several others - flaw this beauty of a film. "Ragtime" suffers, ultimately, due to lapses in editing - the most grievous lapse the cutting of a short scene which explains Commissioner Waldo's motivation behind the action he ultimately takes with Coalhouse Walker. Add Mary Steenburgen, Mandy Patinkin, James Olsen, Howard Rollins, Keith McMillan and even Elizabeth McGovern (each of them perfectly cast), to name but a few, and you see where Forman wasn't missing a bet. James Cagney was the big news, of course, and deservedly so: Emerging from twenty years of retirement, he showed that he'd not only not lost anything but had added to his expertise. And "Ragtime" is beautiful, stunning in its recreation of early 1900s New York, utilizing a script which somehow ties together the central events and their effects on its main characters as well as one of the finest, most haunting soundtracks (Randy Newman, who went so far as to compose several original 'ragtime' numbers) in the past twenty years, topped off with a first-rate cast. I remember thinking, "How the hell do you make a movie of a book where the central characters are named 'Mother,' 'Father,' and 'Mother's Younger Brother?'" Milos Forman showed how: In a word, beautifully. ![]() I finished reading Doctorow's novel just before it was announced that production had started on the movie.
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