The Broadway production, like the City Center production, will star Joshua Henry as Coalhouse Walker Jr., an African American pianist; Caissie Levy as Mother, the matriarch of an affluent white family; and Brandon Uranowitz as Tateh, a Jewish immigrant. The intersection of those individuals and their communities, with each other and with the history of the United States, drives a complex plot of intertwined narratives that touch on North Pole exploration, early filmmaking, the labor movement, Houdini’s escapades, and, of course, ragtime music.
The musical is among the best-known and most acclaimed works from the longtime collaborators Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the lyrics, and Stephen Flaherty, who wrote the music. The book is by Terrence McNally, an acclaimed playwright who died in 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
DeBessonet, who grew up in Louisiana, said she had seen the original “Ragtime” production when she was a teenager on a trip to New York City, and that she was taken by its emotional complexity. As she considered how to begin her tenure at Lincoln Center Theater, she said, “Starting with a story that happens at the intersection of the personal and the epic feels exactly right.”
She added: “I also feel like it would be remiss to not talk about this show and this moment in America. I cannot know what might be happening when we open, but from the beginning my thesis has been that this show holds the promise and the wound of America, and we are right inside the coexistence of those realities.”
DeBessonet said the Lincoln Center Theater production would be large-scale, with 33 onstage actors and a 28-piece orchestra, and a physical production that will be more elaborate than that at City Center, where the stage is less deep and the run was shorter. “We’re not translating to a naturalistic set, trying to depict every location in the show,” she said, “but the staging and the design have to evolve to meet the space.”
