'Ragtime' shines with blend of music and mayhem
By Cary Ginell Soundthink@aol.com

'Ragtime' at Simi Cultural Arts Center

The Actors' Repertory Theatre of Simi's presentation of "Ragtime" proves that you don't have to have a large stage and tons of money to put on an effective, firstrate production.

The 1998 Tony Award-winning musical is based on E.L. Doctorow's novel about life in America from 1906 to 1914.

The thread that pervades the show is the nascent musical form known as ragtime, which serves as a metaphor for the pronounced changes in technology and the social structure of the United States during these critical years.

The score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty is one of their best, capturing the graceful beauty of the stately and elegant ragtime tunes that were sweeping the nation during this period in American history.

The show focuses on three sets of characters: a white upper-class family from New Rochelle, New York; a Jewish immigrant widower from Latvia and his young daughter; and a charismatic African American musician.

These fictional characters interact with historical figures of the time, including escape artist Harry Houdini, millionaire banker J.P. Morgan and educator/activist Booker T. Washington, among others, to present a morality lesson in social justice that points out the fallacies of America as "the land of opportunity."

The New Rochelle family consists of an unnamed mother and father, their clairvoyant son Edgar and the mother's impressionable brother, all of whom have been insulated from blacks and immigrants until Mother discovers a live newborn African American baby that had been buried by its mother.

She not only takes the baby into their household but also its mother, Sarah, who had abandoned the illegitimate child. The child's father, Coalhouse Walker Jr., is a proud and talented piano player who coaxes Sarah back into his life, promising to marry her and make them respectable.

Trouble looms when Walker's car is destroyed by white racists, with all his attempts to bring the culprits to justice foiled. When Sarah is beaten to death by police while she pleads Coalhouse's case before the vice presidential candidate, a chain of events is set off, leading to Coalhouse becoming a vengeful vigilante arsonist and murderer.

In the end, Mother and the Jewish immigrant, Tateh, the two characters that handle adversity best, find each other and form a family that represents the melting pot American society was fast becoming in the new century.

In Doctorow's novel, the historical personages play more integrated roles in the story, especially self-proclaimed "personality" Evelyn Nesbit (Dahni Piro), the Britney Spears of a hundred years ago. Except for Booker T. Washington (who actually pleads with Walker to cease his virulent path of revenge), the historical figures in the musical act more as ancillary figures, either commenting on the action or tangentially aligning themselves with the characters.

Co-producer Jan Glasband (who also played the notorious anarchist Emma Goldman) made sure that the actors were sumptuously costumed. Aside from a few cheesy false mustaches and beards, the characters were all splendidly dressed in period costumes. This more than made up for the sparse and cramped stage.

With only rudimentary choreography, the main physical action in the show was pantomime (as in the Henry Ford assembly line scene) and slow motion fights.

Gary Poirot's small orchestra performed flawlessly, although its volume tended to drown out some of the singers who did not have headset microphones.

The cast is universally excellent, but special plaudits go to Tarta Smitheman, in her sensitive portrayal of Mother, and Kevin Yarbrough, who makes the difficult transformation of the tormented Coalhouse Walker seem easy. David Daniels did a fine job as Tateh, the Latvian Jew, resisting the impulse to play his character like Tevye the milkman from "Fiddler on the Roof."

Young Austin Miller, who plays the little boy Edgar, was as professional as any performer on the stage, while newcomer Lina Gatineau-Elder, a transplant from Montreal, was luminous as the tragic figure of Sarah.

The messages communicated in "Ragtime" are timeless: tolerance, justice, hope and pride, constructs that are as relevant to Americans one hundred years later as they were in the dawning of the 20th century.

"Ragtime" continues through December 2. For ticket information, go to www.simi-arts.org or call (805) 583-7900.