Ragtime The Musical: Mostly Original Broadway Cast recording

This recording is not listed as being the OBC album, but rather as "Songs from" Ragtime The Musical .  I wonder if E.L. Doctorow insisted on this being listed as "The Musical", so as not to confuse it with "The Novel" or "The Film" or "The Hip-Hop Concert."  While most of the cast of this recording is the cast that appeared on the Broadway opening night of this show, there are a couple of significant personnel changes.  If you know why, please tell me.  Oh, wait, I see, this was the out of town try-out cast in Toronto, not the Broadway cast.

I saw Ragtime on tour in Chicago close to a decade ago.  I remember thinking that it was a lovely score hampered by some pedestrian directing.  I put my career at risk with that statement, as the show was directed by Frank Galati, noted Chicago writer/director.  But as Galati also directed the brief, toxic production of Pirate Queen, which played Chicago before dying on Broadway--no one is immune to the creating schlock.

Ragtime is not schlock, even by the most curmudgeonly of standards.  There is powerful music, here, sung in powerful and effective ways.   But somehow it tries to take on too much for my tastes.   While the pastiche numbers for Evelyn Nesbitt, Henry Ford, Emma Goldberg, and Harry Houdini give a good feel for the era, they get in the way of telling the human stories of Mother, Father, Coalhouse, and Sarah. 

What a great cast, though.  Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie are three of my favorite singers each given one fantastic song to sing and several interesting ensemble numbers (although if I hear that Ragtime theme once more, I may take a sledge hammer to the honky-tonk piano--a feeling I remember having after seeing the show live, too).  I think this is Mark Jacoby's first appearance in my year; I must look for other recordings with him.

Ragtime

Music by Stephen Flaherty

Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens

Book by Terrence McNally

Toronto Cast recorded in 1996 before the show opened on Broadway in 1997

Cast: Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, Mark Jacoby, Jim Corti, Camille Saviola,