The American Dream on Stage

I do not find the term the American Dream to be as culturally popular as it once was but every so often the term undergoes a facelift and becomes part of the national conversation. Simply stated, the American Dream is the belief that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and thus ensure a better life.

It was James Truslow Adams who popularized the term during the Great Depression in 1931. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty and equality but has evolved over the years to mean achieving material wealth and an upward social mobility.

To illustrate my point, I will revert to a revival of an old play that has hit Broadway just recently, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in the Great White Way. You know you are old when you remember seeing a revival when it debuted. I am referring to the play Ragtime, which I saw in 1998. 

To jar my memory, I found an excellent summary of the play in STAGEAGENT online. According to its study guide, the play has been adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s novel of the same name. Ragtime is a compelling epic, which captured the American Experience at the turn of the 20th century.

In a recent play review for the New York Times, written by Laura Collins-Hughes for the revival of Ragtime, the headline read, The American Soul, Explored. According to the review, the time was apt for a show which rummages through an American moment to interrogate the American soul…

Ragtime tells the stories of three ethnic and racial groups in America around the turn of the 20th century, all in pursuit of the American dream. In doing so, the play confronts the dialectic contradictions of the human heart and the limitations of the country’s justice system inherent in the American reality of the new century.

A Harlem musician represents African Americans, while upper-class suburbanites follow Mother, the matriarch of a white middle class family in New Rochelle, a popular suburb of New York City. Eastern European immigrates are represented by Tatem, a Jewish émigré’ from Latvia.   

The plot begins with the discovery of a black newborn, who had been partly buried in Mother’s Backyard. (This is far too reminiscent of the birth surroundings of Moses to be a coincidence.) The police arrive with Sarah, the baby’s mother. Mother takes pity on them and takes responsibility for the mother and her baby.  After Tatem and his family arrive at their Port of Entry on Ellis Island, just outside of New York City, he quickly begins his life in America by drawing silhouettes and selling them on the street. He and the Little Girl quickly descend into poverty. The historical figure Socialist Emma Goldman fails at her attempt to entice them to join her party.

In Harlem, Coalhouse, a popular pianist informs his audience that he has found his lost love Sarah and is going to win her back. En route to New Rochelle, Coalhouse is harassed by a racist firehouse squad, who taunts him because he is driving his own car. When he arrives at Mother’s house he is stunned by his baby’s existence. While Sarah refuses his initial attention, he persists in trying to see them, eventually winning her back.

Ragtime shines the stage lights on the American reality of the times, which included the inner conflicts of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair. Over the course of the show, which is three hours long, the diffident worlds of a wealthy white couple, a Jewish immigrant father and his motherless daughter, and an African American ragtime musician intertwine.

Together they discover the surprising interconnections of the human heart in their truly American experience. Thus, this musical sweeps across the diversity of human experience to create a demanding epic that captures the inner beat of its marches, protests, cakewalks and of course its Ragtime. For historical realism, a congress of historical figures and luminaries of the period, such as magician Harry Houdini, actress Evelyn Nesbit, industrialist Henry Ford, and banker J.P. Morgan, make cameo appearances.

To further illustrate my point, I turned to New York Times writer Laura Collins-Hughes’s review of Ragtime. In Exploring America’s Soul, she confesses the play is not blind to the uglier forces of the culture… But in the same breath, she proceeds to list every sin and prejudice in the book. She even dusts off the memory of the assassinated anarchist, Emma Goldman throughout the show, reminding her readers that Goldman had exposed the evils of rapacious capitalists.

The review emphasizes the play’s present tense civic necessity. This is usually the elephant in the room or in this case, the exposure of a hypocritical patronization, masquerading as a play. Since the play is mostly about race, I personally believe that it is just another attempt by pseudo intellectuals to indict American culture and its racist past. What most of them forget, never knew, or more likely refused to take seriously, is that racism is just one of the capital sins that all races share in as part of a mutual fallen human nature.

As an addendum Collins-Hughes reminds us that Racism in particular has moral consequences in this musical…and by inference for everyone in this country. Of course, she also reminds us that the musical is an optimistic vision of American social harmony. This is an idea I believe the writer thinks could extend to every happy ending in the theatrical and entertainment world. Her review concludes with the rhetorical question: What is the status of our American dream? This quarter-century Ragtime patron still wants to know!