This album of highlights from the stage musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime was recorded while the show was still in workshop and released shortly before its world premiere in Toronto in December 1996. It features the principal members of the cast, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Marin Mazzie. The novel presents a panoramic portrait of life in the U.S. in the early 1900s, combining the stories of archetypal characters with actual historical figures, making it a difficult work to condense ...
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This album of highlights from the stage musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime was recorded while the show was still in workshop and released shortly before its world premiere in Toronto in December 1996. It features the principal members of the cast, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Marin Mazzie. The novel presents a panoramic portrait of life in the U.S. in the early 1900s, combining the stories of archetypal characters with actual historical figures, making it a difficult work to condense into a musical book, not to mention a collection of musical highlights. (Though it should be noted that, at 62 minutes and with 21 tracks, this Songs From disc is longer than most full-length original cast albums.) Songwriters Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Aherns have understandably drawn heavily on early 20th century musical styles, especially, of course, ragtime, though one can also detect the influence of Stephen Sondheim and other theater composers. The bravura performances, notably those of Mitchell and the underutilized McDonald, propel a set of songs that, however they may be tied together in the theater, come across as highly disparate on record. Individual tunes, such as the humorous "The Crime Of The Century" and the anthemic "Wheels Of A Dream," work on their own, but, possibly because the piece was still coming together when this album was recorded, it comes off more as a series of tangentially related musical scenes than as a coherent whole, promising but incomplete. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi
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