It’s official! The Kennedy Center’s Washington DC Production of Ragtime is making its way to Broadway! Here is the story, right from the front page of Playbill:
Ragtime, the Tony Award-winning musical that fans say got a too-short Broadway run after its 1998 launch in the same season as The Lion King is coming back to the Great White Way. The news has been buzzed about for weeks, and on July 1 producers made it official: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ recent all-new and critically acclaimed production of Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Ragtime, based on the E.L. Doctorow novel, featuring direction and choreography by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, will begin Broadway previews Oct. 23 at the Neil Simon Theatre. Opening is Nov. 15.
Casting and ticketing information will be announced soon. Members of the Kennedy Center company will likely be offered their roles again. Ragtime will be produced on Broadway by Kevin McCollum, Roy Furman, Roger Berlind, Max Cooper, Tom Kirdahy/Devlin Elliott, Jeffrey Sine, Scott Delman, Roy Miller, LAMS Productions, Inc., Wendy Federman, Emanuel Azenberg in association with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Milgrom Dodge’s production debuted at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater on April 18 and played a popular limited engagement through May 17, 2009. The award winning production team includes scenic design by Derek McLane, original costume design by Santo Loquasto, lighting design by Donald Holder, musical direction by James Moore and original orchestrations by William David Brohn.
After a test run in Toronto, Ragtime originally opened on Broadway on Jan. 18, 1998 at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. The musical won four Tony Awards including Best Book (Terrence McNally), Original Score (lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty) and Best Orchestrations (Williams David Brohn). Audra McDonald won a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for playing Sarah.
The lavish, big-cast project was initiated and guided by producer Garth Drabinsky, whose production company Livent would collapse within several years of the Broadway bow. Frank Galati directed the original; Graciela Daniele choreographed. Both were Tony-nominated for their work. A scaled-down London production and a national tour followed the Broadway run, and the title has since been seen in regional, stock and amateur theatre. Flaherty told the Washington Post earlier this year that the 2009 production, physically, falls somewhere between the opulent 1998 production and the “minimalist” London production.