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October 27, 2000/28 Tammuz 5760, Vol. 53, No.5
History comes alive in 'Ragtime'
LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer
Ragtime, "a musical story of three families embarking on voyages of self-discovery, will appear Oct. 31-Nov. 8 at Gammage Auditorium on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe.
Set in New York at the turn of the century, "Ragtime" intertwines the lives of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a ragtime musician from Harlem; a Victorian family in New Rochelle, N.Y.; and a Latvian Jewish immigrant and his daughter.
"It's about their individual journeys and how they're struggling with these conflicts within themselves," says actor Jim Corti, who plays the Latvian immigrant, "Tateh," Yiddish for "father."
"Through the narrative ... their lives all crisscross and meet and they influence each other in a very dramatic way," Corti says.
The four-time Tony Award-winning musical is based on the novel "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow. A 1981 film based on the book was actor James Cagney's last movie performance.
Corti describes his character as "an artist and widower with a little daughter (among the) countless, thousands of immigrants who came through Ellis Island at that time. He finds greater hardship than he left behind."
After a great struggle, Tateh "manages to find the better life that he's searching for within himself with his great artistry ... and his inventive mind and is able to achieve success that way. It's not an external kind of success as much as something that came from within him," Corti explains.
The play also delves into how "historic figures touch the lives of these ordinary people who have extraordinary things going on in their lives," says the Italian actor from Manhattan. The real-life historical characters include automobile maker Henry Ford, master illusionist Harry Houdini, financier J.P. Morgan and political activist Emma Goldman.
Also woven into the characters' lives are historic events, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the birth of the American labor union, the development of assembly-line technology and the dawn of the automotive and motion picture industries.
In a 1996 documentary, Doctorow told interviewer Colin Smith that "Ragtime" as a "tapestry ... of interactions suggests that if you neglect the story of any one of three families or (cut) their connections with the historic characters, you pull the threads out of the tapestry and the whole thing will sag and lose its tension."
Corti describes Doctorow as "a very vibrant man" who supervised the original production as it was developed in Toronto in 1996. Doctorow's comment to the cast on the first day of rehearsals was: "Ragtime was the invention of black musicians, and it caught on because it was suggestive of a new rhythm for America. It not only led the way to an American music freed of European conventions - jazz and swing and popular song - it was prophetic of an aroused American culture." The comment appears at www.ragtimethemusical.com.
Corti, 51, started with the original cast as both Harry Houdini and understudy for the character Tateh. The current cast has been on the road for about a year, performing an average of eight weekly shows over six to seven days.
The story "has a surprising way of sneaking up on the audience in terms of how involved they get in it," Corti says. "Talking really doesn't do justice in the experience of actually attending it and you find yourself so emotionally involved in the characters and in the story and how they're dealing with their struggle."
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