Near the top of the musical “Ragtime,” which unfurls at the turn of the 20th century, the wealthy patriarch of a suburban family boards a ship bound for a polar expedition. His wife won’t miss him much, yet she thinks she will, and so he comforts her.
“But it’s only a year,” he says. “Nothing much happens in a year. The world will not spin off its axis.”
Oh, babe. Wanna bet?
It was almost a year ago when the brief run of Lear deBessonet’s potent “Ragtime” revival at New York City Center straddled the presidential election: apt timing for a show that rummages through an American moment to interrogate the American soul.
Since then, the country has been engaged in an ever-more-fractious internal tussle about its identity and intentions, its dreams and decency.
So while deBessonet’s “Ragtime” production for Lincoln Center Theater, which opened on Thursday night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, has much the same glorious cast it had last fall, the cultural climate has altered its alchemy. The considerable beauty of this inspiriting show — full of complicated emotions about our diaspora nation — is streaked with melancholy.
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