There are musicals that entertain you, musicals that move you, and then there are musicals that make you look at America a little differently on the way home. Ragtime does all three.
Village Theatre opens its 2026–27 season with the sweeping Tony Award-winning musical, now playing at the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre in Issaquah through October 18 before moving to the Everett Performing Arts Center October 24 through November 15. Directed by Joe Calarco, with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and a book by Terrence McNally based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel, Ragtime begins in 1902 and takes us into an America experiencing enormous change.
The easiest way I can describe Ragtime is this: It’s the Gilded Age set to music.
Technically, the story arrives at the tail end of the Gilded Age and moves into the Progressive Era, but the description fits. This is an America where incredible wealth exists alongside terrible poverty, immigrants arrive believing in the American Dream, Black Americans fight for rights supposedly guaranteed to everyone, women begin challenging their prescribed roles, and industrialists are transforming the country almost faster than anyone can keep up.
Sound familiar?
That’s one reason Ragtime remains so powerful. It is a period piece that doesn’t always feel like one.
The musical weaves together three worlds: an affluent white family in New Rochelle, a Black community in Harlem centered around pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., and Jewish immigrant Tateh and his young daughter, who arrive in America hoping for a better life. Their paths eventually collide, while real historical figures including Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford and Evelyn Nesbit weave in and out of their stories.
Watching Ragtime, I couldn’t help thinking about Tintypes. The two shows feel almost like theatrical cousins. Both use the music, personalities and politics of turn-of-the-century America to explore a nation reinventing itself. But where Tintypes is essentially a musical scrapbook—a revue built around period songs and historical personalities—Ragtime gives that world a beating heart through a sweeping dramatic narrative.
If Tintypes shows us the photographs in America’s family album, Ragtime tells us what was happening to the people just outside the frame.
And Village Theatre has assembled an impressive company to tell those stories.
Yusef D Seevers anchors the production as Coalhouse Walker Jr., the gifted Harlem pianist whose optimism and dignity are slowly tested by racism and injustice. Coalhouse’s journey is the emotional engine of the show, and Seevers carries the tremendous weight of that transformation.
Opposite him, Jaden Dominique brings tenderness and vulnerability to Sarah. Their relationship gives Ragtime some of its most intimate moments, making what eventually happens to them all the more devastating.
Jed Resnick’s Tateh represents another version of the American Dream. He arrives as an immigrant with almost nothing except his daughter and his determination. His journey from poverty toward opportunity is deliberately contrasted with Coalhouse’s experience. America opens doors for one man while violently closing them for another.
Allison Standley brings warmth and growing strength to Mother, a woman who begins the story comfortably inside the expectations of her era but gradually discovers that the world—and her place in it—is much larger than she imagined. Matthew Posner’s Father represents the old order struggling to understand a country changing around him, while Kooper Campbell’s Younger Brother becomes increasingly restless with that comfortable world.
The historical characters provide another layer of fun and perspective. Nick McCarthy brings Harry Houdini into this strange American collage, Mike Spee embodies automobile titan Henry Ford, Miranda Antoinette Westman takes on celebrity sensation Evelyn Nesbit, and Arlando Smith portrays Booker T. Washington.
Then there is Jasmine Jean Sim as Emma Goldman, the fiery anarchist and political activist who seems almost incapable of entering a room quietly—and thank goodness for that. Goldman serves as something of a political conscience within Ragtime, questioning wealth, power, labor and inequality while Younger Brother becomes fascinated by her worldview. Sim gives Goldman exactly the kind of presence she needs: you listen when she speaks.
What makes Ragtime remarkable is how Flaherty and Ahrens turn all these competing voices into one musical language. Ragtime, gospel, marches, vaudeville, Jewish musical influences and traditional Broadway storytelling collide just as the characters do. The music doesn’t simply accompany the story; it represents America itself—different rhythms fighting, overlapping and eventually finding moments when they can exist together.
Under Calarco’s direction, the scope is big, but the human stories remain at the center. Jimmy Shields’ choreography helps keep this constantly moving world alive, while the musical direction gives Flaherty and Ahrens’ score the size it deserves.
And that’s ultimately why Ragtime still matters.
America in 1902 was arguing about immigration, race, enormous concentrations of wealth, workers’ rights, women’s roles and what equality actually means. More than a century later, audiences don’t need a history book to recognize many of those conversations.
But Ragtime isn’t simply angry about America’s contradictions. It also believes deeply in its possibilities. That’s what makes the show heartbreaking rather than hopeless. These characters keep reaching for something better, even when the country they’re living in doesn’t always live up to the promises it makes them.
Village Theatre’s Ragtime reminds us that American history isn’t a neat collection of dates and famous names. It’s messy, painful, funny, beautiful and filled with people demanding to be heard.
Maybe that’s the strongest connection to Tintypes. Both musicals ask us to listen to the voices of America’s past.
Ragtime simply turns up the volume.
Village Theatre’s Ragtime plays at the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre in Issaquah through October 18, 2026, before moving to the Everett Performing Arts Center October 24–November 15, 2026. Click HERE for Tix.
