Rags

Rags: Elaine Liner review

The Riches of Rags

There is a fiddler and there is a roof in Rags, the 1986 musical getting a splendid revival at Irving's Lyric Stage. But those aren't the only things it has in common with that other piece of American musical theater featuring Russian Jews belting show tunes. The books for Rags and Fiddler on the Roof are by Joseph Stein, who died in 2010, just as Lyric producer Steven Jones began working with Rags composer Charles Strouse on a revamped version of the show.

Packed with powerful vocals by its leads and played with a 35-piece orchestra in the pit, Rags is the sort of noble, heartfelt effort that underscores Lyric's dedication to doing great and often underappreciated American musicals in a big way. Strouse, now 83, pitched Rags to Lyric Stage, having seen and liked Lyric's production of his Bye Bye Birdie last year — the same week he saw Dallas Theater Center open its big-budget revival of another Strouse musical, It's a Bird ... It's a Plane ... It's Superman.

Rags played for only four performances in its Broadway run 25 years ago. Since then Strouse and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell, Pippin) have repolished it several times, putting new songs in, taking others out and trying to find the right balance of characters. The book tells interwoven stories of Jewish refugees coming through Ellis Island to Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 20th century and trying to find their place in the American dream.

If it sounds like a sequel to Fiddler, it almost was. Stein had begun writing it as that, with Tevye and his family escaping the pogroms to sail to America. But other characters emerged instead and Rags evolved into a musical about Jewish immigrant women, with subplots about culture clashes, Tammany Hall politics and the awful assembly lines where many refugees worked in grim conditions before unions helped change the garment industry.

Front and center in Rags are young mother Rebecca Hershkovitz (played here by the gorgeous Amanda Passanante) and her friend Bella (Kristin Dausch, who was Lyric's fine Funny Girl and who stops this show with the title song). The girls meet on the boat over from Europe and decide to share a tenement apartment in Lower Manhattan. Living with them are Rebecca's young son David (Chet Monday) and Bella's widowed father, Avram (Jackie L. Kemp). Rebecca has lost touch with husband Nathan (G. Shane Peterman), who arrived in New York years before and has no idea his wife and son have followed.

Before Nathan shows up in the second act, having Americanized his name to "Nat Harris," Rebecca falls for a fiery union organizer named Saul (handsome Brian Hathaway). The two men represent opposite sides of societal assimilation. Nat, a ward leader promising a crooked Irish pol (Stephen Bates) the Jewish vote, is embarrassed that his wife speaks little English. Idealistic Saul, who gives David and Rebecca English lessons, appeals to her sense of justice. When the Triangle Factory fire claims lives, Rebecca is inspired to lead her fellow seamstresses in a defiant walkout.

Songs in Rags reflect a melting pot of period styles. Strouse, who has always written knockout show music, pays melodic homage to Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin and the minor-key folk tunes of Jewish klezmer. Schwartz's lyrics are pointedly political and click with internal rhymes, as when two predatory slickers look over the latest batch of arrivals on the dock: "Another load of greenhorns fresh off the boat, another wave of refugees/to fill the mills and factories/a little grist for the capital system ... Greenhorns, ship 'em in/They keep our pockets full of green."

There's an Occupy Wall Street relevance to messages in Rags about the oppression of low-paid working stiffs and the struggle of unions to gain rights for huddled masses yearning to breathe something other than the stifling air of sweatshops. These used to be cherished American values, before the current wave of robber barons started blaming poor people for the high unemployment rate.

If that makes Rags sound a bit quaint, well, perhaps. But like all good musicals, it's really all a love story anyway. In this one, there's the romantic triangle of Rebecca and her men at the center of a larger romantic idea that anyone from anywhere can do anything once they sail past the Statue of Liberty. The newcomers fall in love with their new country. "You're a Yankee boy now," Nathan sings to David in one of this show's dandier numbers.

Directed by Cheryl Denson, with musical direction by Jay Dias, Rags is an old-fashioned American musical, enriched by the young cast of 21 exceptionally talented singers and actors. I can report that Strouse approves too. Listening in on his intermission conversation with his wife on opening night, I heard him say, "This is the way we imagined this show." Imagine that.

Rags: Mark Lowry review

Coming to America

Charles Strouse's Rags still needs work, but Lyric Stage makes a strong case for reviving it.

If the musical theater gods are into that whole "everything happens for a reason" bit, as many followers of various dieties like to believe, then we now know why Kevin Moriarty needed to revive/revise the Charles Strouse musical flop It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman at the Dallas Theater Center in 2010.

The reason: So that Strouse would come to Dallas to see it, and also catch a full-orchestra revival of his second-most popular musical Bye Bye Birdie at Lyric Stage playing at the same time. (His most popular show is the one about the orphan girl with the big red 'fro.) And then Strouse would be so impressed with Lyric's full-orchestra treatments, he'd ask Lyric founding producer Steven Jones to revisit another of his musicals that, like It's a Bird, had a short run on Broadway: 1986's Rags.

If the Man of Steel was bound to save anything, turns out, it was Rags, where the show is getting a revival with a 35-piece orchestra and a stellar cast. The musical still has problems, mainly with its book, which was written by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof). He reworked the book before his death in 2010, and that's the version Lyric is staging, billing it as a world premiere.

Strouse's score fuses ragtime and klezmer into his typcally tuneful music, which is big where it needs to be and subtle in the right places. Under the music direction of Jay Dias, this production again proves that Lyric's full-orchestra revivals are a pursuit well worth the time, effort and cost. The order of the songs has been rearranged a bit (and some from the Broadway version have been omitted), and a few of them achieve what many often consider the sign of a promising musical: you leave humming them.

Stephen Schwartz wrote the lyrics. By 1986, he had several important shows behind him (Godspell and Pippin). And although he didn't have anything to do with the music for Rags, he admits in the program notes that it's his favorite from Strouse, you can hear its influence on Schwartz's biggest success as a composer: the mega-hit Wicked. If you know Wicked, some of the music in Rags, especially the horns and percussion in the title song, will sound vaguely familiar.

As for the story, well, the comparisons to Fiddler on the Roof and Ragtime aren't off the mark. Set in 1911 New York, it tells of a group of Jewish immigrants who have arrived on Ellis Island and set out to find their American dream.

Rebecca (Amanda Passanante) and her son David (Chet Monday) arrived after her husband Nathan (G. Shane Peterman, in a role that suits him well), who we'll later find out is assimilating a little too much. Upon arriving, Rebecca meets the independently minded Saul (Brian Hathaway), as well as Bella (Kristin Dausch) and her over-protective father Avram (Jackie L. Kemp). On the boat, Bella met Ben (Jonathan Bragg) and they form a bond of which Avram, in true Tevye-like fashion, won't approve. Meanwhile, fruit vendor Rachel (the fantastic Lois Sonnier Hart) takes a liking to the widowed Avram.

If it sounds like a set-up for two or three storylines (like the later Ragtime), that's the idea. But it still feels muddled, and in Lyric's production, directed by Cheryl Denson, it's hard to focus on them when there's the crowd of fellow immigrants always hanging around, largely doing nothing—but still distracting—on Mamie Trotter's oddly spare set, which is just a hexagonal, raked platform. It's as if they're all stuck on a ship the entire time. Drenda Lewis' costumes are fittingly drab, and nicely done.

Luckily, the performances and vocals are strong enough to overcome the stasis. Passanante and Dausch get the best numbers, and deliver on the big notes and the pathos, and Hathaway has a blast with his character. Bragg makes an especially promising Lyric debut.

There's some fun stuff with the immigrants fitting in, such as selling gramohones or attending a Yiddish Theatre production of Hamlet (Max Swarner is Hamlet, Amber Nicole Guest is Ophelia), which leads to the song "It's Hard To Be a Prince."

Hamlet's story was tragic, and so it goes for one major character, which is when the musical brings in the historical event of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which led to labor unions firing up at Tammany Hall. And that's how it ends, as the new Americans realize that the streets here aren't paved with gold like they were led to believe.

But they're paved. Like many immigrant stories, there's hope to be found in the struggle.

Rags: Lawson Taitte review

Lyric Stage turns little-known ‘Rags’ into riches… Lyric Stage has uncovered a treasure in Rags and polished it up into something rich and wonderful… Amanda Passanante is an amazing find, with a voice that combines operatic qualities with the ability to belt. Kristin Dausch confirms the glittering impression she made here in Funny Girl, and Brian Hathaway creates a tough, serious figure unlike anything he has done before. Lois Sonnier Hart and G. Shane Peterman are superb in beefy supporting roles. Director Cheryl Denson keeps the whole cast grounded in reality, and, man, that orchestra under conductor Jay Dias keeps convincing you Rags may actually be Strouse’s masterpiece.

[ Unfortunately the rest of this review is not available since its online source at Dallas Morning News has been removed. ]