Audra McDonald and Broadway elite mark resonant RAGTIME revival at Lincoln Center

Broadway gathered at the Vivian Beaumont Theater for the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Ragtime, a staging that its artistic director Lear deBessonet believes speaks to 2025 audiences with fresh urgency. She described the musical as a work that holds the country’s beauty and its wounds, and that the audience connection feels especially poignant today.

Adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, the show threads together the lives of a white New Rochelle family, a Black Harlem pianist, and a Jewish father and daughter escaping Latvia at the turn of the 20th century. The original production opened on Broadway in 1998 after premieres in Toronto and Los Angeles.

Opening night drew a starry crowd, including Rachel Zegler, Hillary Clinton, Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Danielle Brooks, Matthew Rhys, Michael Urie, Phillipa Soo, and Michael Kors.

Six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald reflected on the American Dream and her generation’s role in shaping it, expressing regret to younger audiences while voicing faith that they will move it forward. The question of whether that dream is still attainable echoed through the afterparty at the Metropolitan Opera House. Joshua Henry, who stars as Coalhouse Walker Jr., cited his Jamaican parents’ journey as proof of what determination can yield. Rodd Cyrus, who portrays Harry Houdini alongside historical figures such as Booker T. Washington and Henry Ford, underscored the immigrant drive that built enduring legacies, noting Houdini’s rise from nothing to cultural icon.

DeBessonet previously mounted a concert staging at New York City Center timed to the week of the 2024 presidential election, a reminder that the musical both celebrates and critiques the national experiment. A line from the show captures its thesis with clarity, the dream of what this country can be, not what it already is.

The revival features Joshua Henry and Rodd Cyrus, with principal cast members Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, Colin Donnell, Nichelle Lewis, Ben Levi Ross, Shaina Taub, Anna Grace Barlow, John Clay III, Nick Barrington, and Tabitha Lawing. Ragtime runs at the Vivian Beaumont Theater through 4 January 2026.

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