Rags revisited
It managed 18 previews and just four performances on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in 1986 and what I wouldn’t have given to have seen the great Teresa Stratas in the central (very central) role of Rebecca Hershkowitz. But Charles Strouse and Stephen Schwartz’ Rags has endured as a score and the cast album (alas not with Stratas but with the vocally more operatic Julia Migenes) is treasured by all aficionados of musical theatre.
So just the kind of piece to offer semi-staged (meaning everyone off books and a little dancing thrown in) as a charitable one-nighter – this one from Aria Entertainment and Knockhardy Productions for Centrepoint, a refuge for homeless youngsters. The other potential advantage of semi-staged is the option of stripping back the book (Joseph Stein) the better to showcase the score – though in this case a pretty basic narration (Maureen Lipman perched in a dress circle box) would probably have had Fiddler on the Roof‘s librettist spinning in his grave. The last time I saw Rags (at the Bridewell Theatre) the songs felt richer for having more of the drama (such as it is) to flesh out their purpose.
That Bridewell revival also homed in on the intimacy of the piece and in its instrumental arrangements cleverly turned the allusion to Klezmer into actual Klezmer. Those sounds are at the heart of Strouse’s score and the mix of other influences in 1910 New York is what gives all the point numbers their distinctive tinta. There’s a stonkingly aspirational ballad in “Children of the Wind” in which the excellent Caroline Sheen brilliantly negotiated the rangy melody across the passaggio from belt to soprano. I love, too, the sultry “Blame it on the Summer Night” and better yet “Wanting” which is Strouse at his most lyrically beguiling (and unpredictable) and shows, too, what a smashing lyricist Stephen Schwartz is. Sheen was on top of all these numbers but their was energetic support all round and a really buzzing performance from the Sebastian Croft as Rebecca’s young son David.
The one negative issue arising from evening was the overbearing and strident sound. With a band so conspicuously wind-heavy (were these an adaptation of the original orchestrations?) was it wise to beef up the decibels to this degree? I appreciate that rigging something like this for one performance is a challenge with little or no room for error but it might have been wiser to err on the side of caution balance-wise and give the vocalists and our ears a chance. Or are we just getting immune to auditory excess?
