Review: RAGTIME Mesmerizes at EPAC

Music popular in the black community isn't loved by older whites. Blacks are unsettling whites, immigrants are flooding America, anti-Semitism is a daily event, black lives just don't matter, and in perfectly normal white American families, educated younger family members are running off spouting leftist nonsense. Welcome to today's newspapers - oh, sorry, that was the 1960s. No, wait, it was 1904, and the musical in question is RAGTIME. With a book by Terrence McNally (THE RITZ, FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIRE DE LUNE) , and lyrics and music by Lynn Aherns and Stephen Flaherty (ANASTASIA, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND), you can't expect weakness or lack of theme, and RAGTIME has everything from immigration to wealth distribution, with Booker T. Washington and Harry Houdini, among others, helping you sort the issues.

Preston Schreffler and Stacia Smith are delights as Father and Mother, a wealthy couple living in New Rochelle, away from black people. immigrants, Jews, and other unsavory people. Father is the most irritating of WASP wealth-holders, while Mother holds secret concern for others unlike themselves, and her younger brother (Rick Kopecky) even more. less secret, concern, having been radicalized by famed anarchist writer Emma Goldman (an incredible performance by Tricia Corcoran). Along the way, their lives intersect with Goldman, a ragtime artist named Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (perhaps Randy Jeter's best performance to date in the area) and his son, and Tateh ("Father") and his daughter (Maya Hartz), two Jewish refugees who work their way from Lower East Side tenements to textiles in Massachusetts to early American cinema, where Tateh finds a new identity and wealth.

While their lives intersect, they're surrounded by strikes, unionization, Irish immigrant whites attacking blacks, orphaned children, Booker T. Washington (Michael Truitt) exhorting blacks to abolish racism through absorbing the values of the educated white middle class, anarchy, murder, and arson. The more times change, the more we relive 1904 in 1969 and in 2019.

RAGTIME is always a great show. This production at EPAC, however, is particularly well-executed and may well be superior to the national tour which came through the area a few years ago. Highlights include "The Crime of the Century," "Atlantic City." "New Music," and the spectacular first act close "Till We Reach That Day" and the eleven o'clock number and the show's biggest hit, "Back to Before." With little in the way of sets and props, but perfect costuming and inspired performances, EPAC's RAGTIME is colorful, action-packed, and mesmerizing, a combination of new and older musical styles that always seems relatable and never feels anything but fresh.

This is one you don't want to miss. It's entirely too entertaining. On through May 11. and worth the time.