"Ragtime" at Berkeley Playhouse

Berkeley Playhouse photo by Ben Krantz Studio

I know I've raved about the youth programs at Berkeley Playhouse, but I've also been pretty impressed with their professional musical productions. Much as I mentioned with Central Works earlier this week, going to Berkeley Playhouse is an architectural treat. Berkeley Playhouse's home is a wonderful former church also designed by Julia Morgan. So it's a great space. The lobby is really small, though, because it's meant for a church. Similar to the setup at the Shotgun Players' Ashby Stage, another converted church.

Anyway, this is about the theater, and I was eager to see the production of Ragtime. I'd never seen it onstage (nor have I read the novel by E.L. Doctorow). But I liked the movie version, and thought it ought to make a compelling stage play. Plus, I really like ragtime music, so what could be bad?

The Play

Set in the early years of the 20th century in greater New York, we have three distinct groups of characters: a nameless, wealthy white family in New Rochelle, a struggling group of African Americans in Harlem, and a motley crew of new immigrants in the tenements of the lower East Side. The groups interact in a few, somewhat improbable ways, but hey, it's a play.

The main thread of the plot line runs through a black ragtime piano player named Coalhouse Walker Jr. Walker abandoned his girlfriend, Sarah, not knowing she was pregnant. Sarah, working as a laundress, abandons and buries the baby in the yard of the family in New Rochelle, where the mother of the family discovers it, still alive. Mother chooses to take in both baby and Sarah, who take up residence in the attic. Walker has a change of heart and seeks out Sarah, learns of the baby, and woos her back. They reunite. Unfortunately, some racists vandalize Walker's car, leading Walker to start a campaign of retaliatory terror.

Meanwhile, one of the Latvian immigrants, an artist, is struggling to make ends meet making silhouettes on the street but stumbles onto making moving picture books, which leads him into directing movies (because of course it does). He crosses paths a couple of times with the New Rochelle mother, and eventually they get in cahoots.

Taken on its face, this story doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but between Doctorow's original story and the adaptation, it just works. It's a pretty pleasing and engaging story (or really, set of interlocked stories) that carries you through to the end.

The Production

This is where it gets interesting, really. Ragtime is a rather large and complicated story, and it requires a lot of people and a fair number of sets to pull off. The cast for this show is about 40 people, which is a big ask for a moderate size theater such as Berkeley Playhouse, and the stage is not huge, so the ensemble numbers take a particular degree of finesse to pull off.

And they do it. The opening production number, in fact, is quite brilliantly staged, with the three groups of characters kind of moving around the stage in clumps, coming up against one of the others they don't mingle with, and then shifting around to a different combination. It's a really complex bit of choreography that actually gives a solid introduction to the conflicts that underlie the story--a good visual start to the show.

Berkeley Playhouse also occupies a kind of never-never-land middle ground between community theaters on one hand and the larger, more established professional theaters on the other. This is a professional stage, and they can attract some pretty good actors, but they can't give the exposure or draw the crowds that a larger theater can. On the other hand, they are packing audiences into the theater, and attracting a high caliber of actor, too. Some I recognize from smaller theaters, such as CCCT and Custom Made Theatre Company (and indeed, previous shows at Berkeley Playhouse). Reading through the program credits shows a considerable level of experience in a variety of theaters. But undeniably, the leading actors are very much up to the task, and no one in the cast, including the children and teens (largely recruited from Berkeley Playhouse's own conservatory program) is noticeably lagging or inappropriately cast.

Standouts in the cast include Dave J. Abrams as Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Marissa Rudd as Sarah. Abrams has tremendous charisma and sings and dances quite well. Rudd has an amazing and moving voice, and carries the emotional journey of Sarah a long way. Mischa Stevens as Tateh, the Latvian entrepreneur, has a super solid voice and a wonderful personality that comes across both when dealing with his daughter and later with Mother and others. And Mother, played by Mindy Lym, has a wonderful voice, though her acting seems a bit more limited than some of the other leads. Special shout-outs go to Elijah Cooper as the prescient Little Boy in the New Rochelle clan who has to open and close the play, and to Jessica Coker as Emma Goldman, who carries something of a narrative role very well.

Bottom Line

Once again Berkeley Playhouse has managed to exceed even my rising expectations. This is a challenging piece even for a big company with a lot of resources, but Berkeley Playhouse pulls it off with aplomb and a good bit of cleverness. Somehow they manage to make a 40-member cast seem intimate, even in the generous space of the Julia Morgan Theater.

I wish I could recommend that you go see the show. Unfortunately, it largely sold out before it closed last weekend. We barely squeaked in on Friday night, and Saturday and Sunday were already long sold. But there are still a couple more shows left in their current season: James and the Giant Peach (about which I know nothing) in the spring and Grease in the summer. This theater is attracting a lot of stage talent and a lot of customers--they're definitely doing something right.