Ragtime | December, 2025

Vivian Beaumont Theatre, NYC

I struggle to write about good theatre. The equilibrium of my vocabulary tends to lean more towards the negative. The current revival of the late 1990s musical, Ragtime, is so exquisitely beautiful it offers a sudden jolt of that equilibrium, pushing it far into the positive for a brief moment in time.

Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, the musical was created in the late 1990s by book writer Terrence McNally and musical duo Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. After successful runs in Toronto and Los Angeles, it moved to Broadway where it picked up three Tony Awards, but ultimately losing out Best Musical to The Lion King. It returns to Broadway in its second revival after a short New York City Encores run in late 2024 — this is the birthplace of other recent award-winning revivals such as Parade and Into The Woods. With director Lear deBessonet formerly at the helm of Encores, and now taking over the mantle as Artistic Director of the Lincoln Centre, it makes sense for her production to have transferred to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Centre in one of the strongest musical offerings of the 2025-26 season.

It also makes sense that now is the right time for another revival of this stirring and sadly timely musical. The show intertwines three stories: an upper-class white family from New Rochelle (known only as: Mother, Father, Grandfather, Mother’s Younger Brother), a community of Black Americans (led by Coalhouse Walker Jnr), and a recently immigrated Jewish family (Tateh and his daughter). The story plays out as one might imagine: the whites save everything, the tale of Coalhouse Walker Jnr starts promising and ends in double tragedy, and after a rough start, the Jewish family finds their way. The ending too is a little convenient, wrapping up the various storylines as neatly as necessary for the sake of exposition. It was written with a theme of optimism in mind, a sense of hope for what might become of society.

The show itself isn’t flawless, but the execution most certainly is. Making clever and necessary use of the large, sprawling thrust stage at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, it almost feels immersive. It doesn’t take much ingenuity for each scene to feel fresh: a new backdrop, a riser, a rotating stage, a change in lighting state. The show’s fifteen-minute opening number, Prologue, begins with the 33-person cast rising from beneath the stage, as if summoning the long-dead to tell their story. It was at about this point that most of the row I was sitting in reached for their nearest tissue. Said tissues were firmly gripped and used by many for the next two and a half hours. DeBessonet has managed, in this more fully fleshed-out production compared to her in-concert production at Encores, to squeeze out every ounce of emotion as the audience ride the waves of the highs and lows of this dense and complex story.

There has been some critique as to the production’s minimalist set— the house in New Rochelle, for example, is created through a fly-in outline of a roof and a set of stairs. The Ford Model T that Coalhouse Walker Jnr owns is far from a full-scale replica. But a lavish attempt at a full-scale revival in 2009 closed after only 65 performances due to the high running costs of maintaining a faithful re-creation of the original, along with a large cast and orchestra. I, for one, would rather have a minimalist set to accompany an extraordinary cast, than vice versa.

The cast themselves are sublime; it is rare to have a cast of this size without a weak link. Cassie Levy (Next to Normal) is a touching and heartfelt mother, growing in her independence as the show goes on, and delivering some applause-worthy zingers towards her husband by the show’s end - think A Doll’s House, in musical form. But in this case, she need not walk out the front door, as Father dies on yet another maritime excursion (much to her relief) allowing her to marry the now wealthy and successful movie director, Tateh. Brandon Uranowitz (Tony winner for Tom Stoppard’s final piece Leopoldstadt) is a passionate and indefatigable Tateh in fine voice throughout. There are some other Broadway regulars within the cast as well: Shaina Tubb (Suffs) as Emma Goldman and Ben Levi Ross (The Connector, Dear Evan Hansen) as the Younger Brother. Nichelle Lewis, as Sarah, has a steep mountain ahead of her - for many, the original soundtrack of Ragtime has the voice of Audra McDonald seared into their memory. Lewis offers a younger and sweeter Sarah that blends vocally and emotionally with her Coalhouse Walker Jnr, Joshua Henry.

Having been previously nominated for three Tony Awards, the American Theatre Wing would be well served to save themselves ten minutes of the June 2026 broadcast and simply give this man his Tony Award now. As a dashing Rapunzel’s Prince in the 2022 revival of Into the Woods, we saw his more youthfully playful side. In the years since, he has matured into a truly leading man, capable of taking a large, unwieldy show by the scruff of its neck. Henry’s ‘Wheels of a Dream’ is as optimistic as you can want it, a rich baritone that could have matched that of the orchestra unamplified if it had to. His haunting ‘Make Them Hear You’ rings out as he is shot dead outside the library he has hauled himself up in following a fit of murderous rage attempting to revenge the death of his beloved Sarah. Sadness though, for the audience, has turned now to anger; what once may have been written as an anthem for the oppressed is now just a bitter reminder of the damage that can be done by large-scale ignorance.

With a running time of three hours, the show feels swift, necessary and all-encompassing. A credit to the direction, to the gorgeous visuals, and the power of the performances. Having already extended into mid-2026, this should be required viewing. This is a story about a world as we can only dream of it, and this is musical theatre of a quality that we can only sometimes dream of too.

★★★★★

Take a look at a truncated version of the Prologue filmed last month for Good Morning America: