Ragtime: Broadway to Newark

by

Neil Genzlinger

New York Times

May 27, 2001

BACK in her junior high and high school days in Monmouth County, Lynn Ahrens was still feeling her way toward a career in theater. She no doubt never could have imagined the high-profile roller-coaster ride she has been experiencing in the last couple of weeks.

The down part of the roller coaster was the announcement two weeks ago that ''Seussical,'' the splashy musical she wrote with Stephen Flaherty, was ending its Broadway run after less than six months, at a substantial financial loss. The up part of the ride comes Tuesday, when the touring version of one of her more successful ventures, ''Ragtime -- the Musical,'' opens at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, continuing through June 3.

''It's great to be down there,'' said Ms. Ahrens, who now lives in New York and is looking forward to taking her mother and some friends to a matinee. ''Ragtime,'' with a book by Terrence McNally and songs by Ms. Ahrens and Mr. Flaherty, ran for two years on Broadway, the inaugural show for the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, closing in January 2000. It has been touring for two years and was just named best musical at the National Broadway Theater Awards, which recognizes touring shows based on voting by audience members.

Ms. Ahrens is not a New Jersey native -- she was born in New York -- but her parents moved to Neptune, near the shore, when she was 9, and she said the years she spent in the state give special meaning to the NJPAC run of ''Ragtime.'' The touring version of the show, she said, is somewhat streamlined from the Broadway version, but she doesn't think that has diminished it.

''If you had never seen the Broadway show, you wouldn't know what you were missing,'' she said. ''In a certain way, I like this version better.''

The road to ''Ragtime,'' Ms. Ahrens said, began in childhood. ''I was a songwriter from probably the age of 3,'' she said. ''I was always singing and working out lyrics. I think its a genetic thing.''

She and Mr. Flaherty have collaborated for 18 years. They had a breakthrough (although, Ms. Ahrens notes, ''every show that we do is a breakthrough for us'') in 1990 with ''Once on This Island,'' for which Ms. Ahrens was both lyricist and book writer. It was nominated for eight Tony Awards.

Despite the success of that and other shows, the pair's participation in ''Ragtime'' was not a given; they had to audition, along with seven or eight other songwriting teams, by writing four songs

. ''We had a terrific treatment to work from,'' Ms. Ahrens said, recalling that audition, ''and it suddenly established a tone."

Three of the four audition songs are among the three dozen that made it into the show. One, ''Till We Reach That Day,'' which closes the first act, won the National Broadway award for best song in a musical.

Passing the audition was just the first step. Then came the daunting task of creating songs to go with the sprawling story, adapted from E. L. Doctorow's turn-of-the-century novel.

''It took us about a year to do a first draft,'' Ms. Ahrens said. ''There was certainly a lot of discarding and revising.''

The score is as ambitious as the novel, ranging through numerous musical styles and through themes large and small. When ''Ragtime'' first opened, some New York reviewers pronounced it formulaic and encumbered by a few too many anthems, but Mr. Ahrens said the success of the touring show proves that the reception a play gets in New York is only part of the story.

That is why she has not paid too much attention to the comments about ''Seussical.'' ''My approach is, don't read the papers, don't go on the Internet,'' she said. Hard knocks, she knows, are part of the theater. ''This is a very difficult business,'' she said. ''Every last person will have a show that closes prematurely.''

She doesn't have much time to brood over ''Seussical'' anyway; she and Mr. Flaherty are already at work on their next project, a ''smaller, very, very different'' show called ''A Man of No Importance.''

Plus, she noted, ''Seussical,'' like ''Ragtime,'' may go on to a long and happy touring life. ''We seem to have very good luck with our shows,'' she said, ''if not immediately, then eventually.''