m ay 2 0 1 7 1 7 Theater Guide neil McMahon Ogunquit Playhouse showcases the edgy Broadway hit Ragtime as a sign of these times. By Olivia Gunn nce upon a time, summer the- ater was dismissed for rarely tak- ing risks. This year, race, immigra- tion, and class issues all take center stage at Ogunquit Playhouse in Ragtime: The Mu- sical, a story spanning 10 years of the early 20th century as the United States prepares to enter World War I. Three families, three different worlds, all-American. To better understand our nation- al uneasiness in 2017, “we must ex- amine how our country came togeth- er,” says artistic director Brad Kenney. “Ragtime shows the struggle laid out bare on the stage.” Based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doc- torow, the musical first premiered at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto in 1996 before making its way to L.A. and finally to Broadway in 1998. The show is epic in its scope. Written by four- time Tony Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize-nominee Terrence McNally, Ragtime follows the lives of three central charac- ters from three very different backgrounds: Mother, an upper-class WASP from New Rochelle; Coalhouse Walker Jr., a black Harlem musician; and Tetah, a Jew- ish immigrant from Eastern Europe. Their lives merge in a force, gen- erating one sweeping, tragic, tri- umphant version of the Amer- ican tale. The story was pro- duced in cinematic form in 1981, garnering a slew of Acade- my Award nominations. Tom Mikotowicz, au- thor and Professor of Theatre at the Uni- versity of Maine, says it’s multiculturalism that makes shows like Ragtime: The Musi- cal and the recent hit Hamilton so striking- ly relevant today. “That is a real post-mod- ern concept. Thirty years ago on Broadway, you weren’t seeing shows like this. In Ham- ilton, for example, the cast would have been made up of white males. That clash, using that post-modern casting concept, points out the discrepancies in our culture.” Doctorow, an Army veter- an who once stated his politics were “Biblical: you shouldn’t murder, you shouldn’t steal,” couldn’t avoid reflections on the Viet- nam War while writing Ragtime in the 1970s. So while it seems there’s no co- incidence that Ogunquit Playhouse has chosen to take on the show now,