In his 1975 novel Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow offers a panorama of Americana. He uses real-life personalities, including magician Harry Houdini, radical militant Emma Goldman, starlet Evelyn Nesbit, Henry Ford and Booker T. Washington and interspersing them almost casually with fictional characters. Though they represent different aspects of society, they all share a common goal-the American Dream. The book is a fascinating picture of society in the years leading up to World War I.

For her first major effort as artistic director at Lincoln Center’s Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lear deBessonet has mounted a revival of the 1997 musical of Ragtime with a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty (music/vocal arrangements) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics.) The sweeping show boasts a large cast of more than 25 and a 28 piece orchestra. You need a lot of musicians and performers to tell so many American stories.

The musical focuses on three families-each of a different social status. There's a white wealthy Father (Colin Donnell) and Mother (wonderful Caissie Levy) whose fortune keeps them immune from the ugliness of the world. It even allows Father to leave his wife and child to go exploring with Admiral Perry. Younger Brother (Ben Levi Ross) gives an emotional performance as a young man searching for something to believe in.

There’s musician Coalhouse Walker ( very impressive Josh Henry) and his love Sara (passionate intense Nichelle Lewis ) and the Black community of Harlem. Problems are foreshadowed when a belligerent fire chief threatens Walker who has driven up the road in his new Model T.
Finally, living a parallel life is Jewish Tateh (impassioned Brandon Uranowitz) and his young daughter who have recently arrived from Latvia. Struggling to make a living while keeping his child safe, Tateh crosses paths with Emma Goldman (feisty Shaina Taub.) Later Tateh truly achieves his American Dream by being in the forefront of the movie industry.

Yet while the performers are enormously talented, and songs are plentiful, the show skimps on staging, employing freestanding doorways to suggest homes, staircases on castors to suggest ships, and a piano to represent a speakeasy.

What works so powerfully in the book gets diluted in the musical. The secondary characters, though they might offer a sense of reality and sometimes even add a little levity, are distracting. The show runs close to three hours, providing each main character with their solo moments.

Emotions run high and the audience is constantly reminded that people often come for the American dream only to find it isn’t so easily reached. (I kept thinking about ICE and the immigrants who dared, often risking life and limb, to escape to this country, only now to be chased out .) I wondered about the definition of The American Dream and how it had changed.

It has become almost commonplace for audiences to deliver standing ovations at the end of the show. Yet the usually subdued LCT audience is one of the few that remains in their seats applauding. Yet the audience at the performance I attended was so moved that it went so far as to stop the show a few times at particularly touching and spectacular performances. Swept up by the emotion and magnificent voices, it rose during the show for Nichelle as the tormented Sara and later as Henry sang “Make Them Hear You.”

Doctorow wrote about America in a time of flux when America was dealing with serious issues - immigration, racism, feminism. It’s been over 100 years and sadly outside the LCT, we are still dealing with many of those same issues.