Joshua Henry to Grace Broadway in Ragtime

ABLUpdated 4 days Ago1 Mins read1

Joshua Henry has kindly agreed to accept a Tony Award next year. Lincoln Center Theater confirmed on May 6 that Ragtime will transfer from City Center Encores! to Broadway this fall starring Henry (Coalhouse Walker, Jr.), Caissie Levy (Mother), and Brandon Uranowitz (Tateh). All three performers received positive reviews for the previous production, but both the word of mouth and the critical response for Henry was particularly rapturous. “Henry’s Coalhouse is pure, earnest intensity,” Vulture critic Jackson McHenry wrote. “He sings like he’s pumping oxygen over embers deep in his chest.” The New York Times’ Jesse Green was even more positive: “Well beyond absorbing the aspirations and travails of the character created by E.L. Doctorow for the 1975 novel on which the show is based, he seems to have become the novel itself. He’s a condensed classic; he blows the roof off your head.”

The production will be again directed by Lear deBessonet, who succeeds André Bishop as artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. “Ragtime feels like the perfect way to begin my tenure as Artistic Director of this very sacred place,” deBessonet said in a statement. “As we celebrate the legacy of LCT and the level of art that has been achieved over the last four decades, it is important for us to continue to be inspired by the sublime possibilities of theater through stories that demand to be told.”

Previews begin at LCT’s Vivian Beaumont Theater on September 26 ahead of an opening night October 16. It will be open for a limited engagement of 14 weeks, closing on January 4, with a book by Terrence McNally and a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, based on the novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow. Performance of the season is officially locked in.