RAGS at The Park Theatre - Bits and pieces...

My first trip to the theatre this year was to see a musical I had seen before - or had I?

RAGS opened on Broadway in 1986 and promptly closed after only four performances.  It's tiny run belies the fact that the show had a score written by Charles Strouse who wrote ANNIE and BYE BYE BIRDIE, the lyricist was Stephen Schwartz who already had GODSPELL and PIPPIN under his belt (WICKED was in the future) and the book was by Joseph Stein who wrote FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

The cast included opera singer Theresa Stratas joining the combined Broadway experience of Larry Kert, Lonny Price and Judy Kuhn.  Although the audience didn't show up, the nominations did: RAGS received five Tony nominations but no awards and another five from the Drama Desk with Stratas winning it's Best Musical Actress Award.  The cast recording lived on after the show garnering a dedicated following (hello Guy!)

RAGS received several small-scale revivals during the 1990s and into the 2000s; I saw one of these at the Bridewell Theatre off Fleet Street in 2001 starring Sally Ann Triplett and found it pleasant but fairly forgettable.  In 2017 the show reappeared at Connecticut's Goodspeed Theatre, using a totally new book by David Thompson which ditched a character or two and refocused the story and this is the basis of The Park's production.  However, despite some fine work within the production, it has all been an exercise in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic - RAGS is just that, scraps of ideas that when joined together shows it's loose stitching.

Despite the new book by David Thompson, the story is overshadowed with memories of Joseph Stein's earlier hit FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and plays like a sequel to that show. with it's tale of Russian Jews arriving in New York to begin a new life away from the dangers of the homeland's pogroms.

Rebecca and her young son David have bribed their way aboard a 'rag' ship sailing for New York from Russia and has made a friend with fellow-emigre Bella who tells her new-found friend that she is lucky as her father Avram is already in the city and can give her a home in the cramped apartment he shares with his brother and sister-in-law.  Rebecca and David have no arrangement and are quickly singled out by the immigration officers to be returned back to Russia but Bella and Avram pretend she is family and they start their life together on the Lower East Side.

Avram's brother Jack is an outsourced tailor who works for the flashy German garment factory boss Bronfman, who while visiting the apartment one day is taken with Rebecca's dress-making skills and, more importantly, by Rebecca herself.  Another visitor is Sal, an Italian-born union leader who hates the sweatshop conditions that his fellow immigrants have to work in, including Bronfman's factory.  Needless to say, Rebecca is soon caught between what the two men can offer her and her son.  Love also blossoms between Bella and the nebbish songwriter Ben, while Avram strikes up a relationship with street peddler widow Rachel.  For one couple, it ends tragically...

This new version of RAGS has, in total, nine lead and supporting characters to keep up with and that's when the problems start: in the first act alone there are twenty numbers (including reprises) that I suspect are expected to provide any depth and emotional resonance you are supposed to feel for the characters but sadly the score is so insubstantial that this does not work.  So you grasp for depth in the book scenes but apart from the characters of Jack and his wife Anna, and Avram and the widow Rachel, you have the relentlessly two-dimensional heroine Rebecca and her colourless rich and poor lovers, and the saccharine partnership of Bella and Ben.

I had to wait until halfway through the second act before my interest finally was engaged with "Three Sunny Rooms" a sly and tentative courtship number between the pursuing Rachel and the more hesitant Avram, but this was more down to the playing of two seasoned musical actors who could sock over the comedy but also mine the loneliness underneath.  After that we hit the Tragic Plot Twist but this was followed a rousing ensemble Union song and Rebecca's big Eleven O'Clock number so at least by the curtain you are a bit more willing to be generous in the applause.

Again I was struck how the The Park200 auditorium feels like a thinner Donmar Warehouse so it was interesting to see a musical there, my other trips have been to see plays.  Bronagh Lagan - in her production imported from Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre - at least kept the action moving and knew when to let the afore-mentioned supporting quartet shine while Gregor Donnelly's design made clever use of battered suitcases as a backdrop and a simple line of shirts to suggest tenement life - even if Owen was probably right in pointing out that the shirts surely would have been collarless in 1910!  Derek Anderson's lighting also was well done at achieving specific moods.

As I said earlier, RAGS became pure Dior whenever Jeremy Rose as Jack, Debbie Chazen as Anna, Dave Willetts as Avram and in particular Rachel Izen as, um, Rachel where onstage, socking their characters into the audience with top-spin.  In particular, Izen and Willets were exquisite in their scenes together - the "Three Sunny Rooms" number was delightfully handled and in their final scene, with his now-wife Rachel unable to shift Avram from all-encompassing grief, they both played it with a telling heavy sadness.

Carolyn Maitland certainly had a grave presence as Rebecca and certainly whacked the character's big ballad "Children Of The Wind" into the back wall of the stalls, sadly what she has not yet managed to get yet is an inner light that illuminates a real lead performer.

I suspect RAGS will continue to be tinkered with, re-cut and re-assembled until it's just THREADS - give me Ahrens and Flaherty's RAGTIME anyday.  But it was a nice way to slide into 2020's theatre going.