In a gorgeous theater in the very heart of New York City, two men atop rolling ladders, one Jewish, one not, sing about being two ships passing in the distance, in the darkness. A blonde woman, her feet deeply embedded on the stage in what is meant to be the safe soil of America — which one of these men is seeking refuge in, and the other is leaving for a great beyond — joins them.
As I watch from the mezzanine on the evening of November 6, there is not a heartstring their voices do not tug. One of them, Brandan Uranowitz, was on a stage more than 20 years ago in the first iteration of this sensational musical called “Ragtime,” based on the book of the same name by Jewish author E.L. Doctorow, a musical that would go on to earn four Tonys for composer Stephen Flaherty, lyricist Lynn Aherns and book writer Terrence McNally. Peter Friedman originated the role of Tateh, which Uranowitz now absolutely eviscerates with musical and emotional poignancy.
Back in 1997, Uranowitz first played a non-Jewish boy named Edgar from a WASP-y New Rochelle family at the center of this story, a boy who gets left behind with his mother, a character named simply Mother, when his father goes on an expedition. Their lives are forever changed by their interactions with the other families in this story, including Jewish immigrant Tateh who crosses the sea and his nameless, motherless daughter for whom he would do anything. There is musician Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Sarah, the washerwoman with whom he falls in love and fathers a child out of wedlock, played in that original production by the unparalleled Audra McDonald. These three very different families forever change and shape each other’s lives in the almost three-hour long play about the promises, broken and unbroken, of America.
Uranowitz grew up in an observant Jewish home in West Orange, New Jersey. Being first cast in the musical all those years ago, he told the New York Times, represented his own personal dream as a 10-year-old and its eventual shattering. Uranowitz was cast as Edgar to replace Paul Dano in the Toronto premiere of the show. Every night they would lighten his dark hair and eyebrows before he walked on stage. But when the production was about to go to Broadway, Uranowitz’s parents were told that a different young actor, Alex Strange, would play Edgar, while Brandon was offered the role of understudy. They decided to gently tell their son that he was not going to Broadway.
“The reasons for me being demoted, for lack of a better term, were either I was too Jewish or I wasn’t good enough. Both of those options are deeply shameful for a kid, and for me even now as an actor,” Uranowitz said. And so the actor, already conflicted as a closeted gay kid in a Conservative Jewish home, was given another layer of shame for his Jewish identity.
Now, Uranowitz is a Tony winner, and not just for any role, but for the very Jewish role as Ludwig in the Tom Stoppard play “Leopoldstadt.” Uranowitz even borrowed from Audra McDonlad for that role, preparing for its most emotional moments in the same way the iconic singer did when he watched her backstage in “Ragtime.”
His entire career has been shaped by Jewish musicals and roles, playing Jon in “Tick, Tick Boom…” and Mendel in “Falsettos.” Now, in the role of Tateh, Uranowitz finds a personal sense of Jewish tikkun, the Hebrew word for fixing, where he can fully embrace his Jewish identity while singing and acting in the play that first made him feel like his Jewishness made him unworthy. It’s a Jewish triumph, for sure, to see Uranowitz sing in Yiddish from the 1915 song incorporated into the immigrant song “A Shtetl Iz Amerike,” whose lyrics in English translate to: ” America is a shtetl / Where, I swear, life is great. / The Divine rests on her; we should all get to live so. / Wars, guns, or bloodshed / we need like a hole in the head. / Who needs an [imperial] ruler? / The hell with kings.”
While another song’s title and chorus — “Lebn Zol Kolumbus” or “Long Live Columbus!” — may not be as lauded now, it shows Tateh praising the American dream, one that will cost him much tsuris as he suffers poverty and strife with his daughter. He turns from dreamful hope to cursing this country of his dreams, exclaiming “I hate you, goddamned America!” And then he turns yet again, finally making his fortune, like many a Jewish man, in the moving pictures that he first invents while making a book of silhouettes to entertain his daughter, reinventing himself as Baron Ashkenazy, inspired by the both literal and figurative magic of reinvention of Harry Houdini, played by brilliant Iranian American Rodd Cyrus in the show.
“Suffs” writer Shaina Taub takes the stage as Jewish revolutionary Emma Goldman. There would be no “Suffs,” she said in an interview, if there wasn’t “Ragtime,” and it’s special to see this Tony-winning creator inspired by the Jewish concept of tikkun olam on stage as a Jewish labor legend, fighting, like the characters of “Suffs,” for a juster future for those who have less.
Across from Uranowitz, that blonde woman singing so powerfully is Caissie Levy in the role of Mother (who also played Uranozitz’s wife in “Leopoldstadt”). Mother’s brother is played by Jewish actor Ben Levi Ross, whose also performs music under the name Boychik and whose songs I have been playing in tandem with the “Ragtime” soundtrack to help me calm my nerves ever since I saw the show. There’s something poignant about half of this non-Jewish family being played by Jewish actors. Even more poignant is hearing every song Levy and Ross sing, with the crowd often rising for ovations, just as they do for the heartbreakingly beautiful Nichelle Williams, who plays Sarah, and the powerhouse that is Joshua Henry as Coalhouse Porter.
Watching all this Jewish talent on stage was a mechaye, a pleasure, for sure, especially in this fraught moment for Jews in America and beyond. But it was even more powerful to see them in a story that connects the Jewish story to the story of America, and to the justice that still needs to be earned.
When a friend asked me if I was interested in joining her to go and see “Ragtime” on November 6, I didn’t think much of the actual date. Somewhere in another compartment in my mind, I knew that it would be the day after the U.S. presidential election, but with the din around us, that didn’t seem significant. But watching the musical that night, every song took new meaning. The words Emma Goldman sings in “He Wanted to Say” — “Every day I wake up knowing / What you’ve lost and what is owing / I would shed this skin if I could / To stand with you and fight” — feel like words of solidarity with all those heartbroken.
This musical, written about turn of the century New York more than two decades ago, still feels so pertinent, especially on a day when so many Black Americans had their dreams shattered, as well as so many Jewish Americans, the majority of whom voted in the hopes of seeing their country led by a Black woman. On a day when so many women’s hearts were broken, too, it is powerful to see Mother on that stage become an empowered woman, one who creates, in her own home and in her own life, a world that is better for everyone’s children.
Being Jewish means mixing the joy with the sadness, and certainly that was my experience seeing “Ragtime,” a Jewish triumph and also a reminder of the brokenness still around us.
