Rags (musical)
| Rags | |
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Studio Recording
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| Music | Charles Strouse |
| Lyrics | Stephen Schwartz |
| Book | Joseph Stein |
| Productions | 1986 Broadway 1999 New Jersey |
Rags is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and music by Charles Strouse.
The Broadway production opened on August 21, 1986 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre with little advance sale and to mostly indifferent reviews, and it closed after only four performances (and 18 previews). Directed by Gene Saks and choreographed by Ron Field, the cast included Teresa Stratas as Rebecca Hershkowitz, Larry Kert as Nathan Hershkowitz, Lonny Price as Ben, Judy Kuhn as Bella Cohen, Dick Latessa as Avram Cohen, Marcia Lewis as Rachel Halpern, and Terrence Mann as Saul, a union organizer. Despite its failure, it garnered a good deal of attention during the awards season, receiving Tony Award nominations for Best Musical, among others.
In 1991, Sony released a studio recording of the score. It featured most of the original cast joined by Julia Migenes replacing Stratas.
In 1991 the creators reunited to present a dramatically rewritten and severely streamlined production at The American Jewish Theatre, New York City, directed by Richard Sabellico. The version had 9 actors playing all of the roles, and a reduced set, with two pushcarts on stage and imaginary windows, with the actors describing the exterior activity. The young immigrant mother has a best friend of almost equal importance, and the story is now told by David, the heroine's young son.
The Colony Theatre Company, Los Angeles, California presented Rags in 1993.
They reworked the show again, staging it first at Florida's Coconut Grove Playhouse (February 1999) and then the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in November 1999. The revised version cut the cast to 15, from the original Broadway cast of 30. According to Strouse, "We tried to do too much. And now it's tightened, more focused. People got lost in it... The diffuse, scattered story now centers on Rebecca Hershkowitz, a young immigrant mother who escapes to the Lower East Side after a pogrom, and her love affair with Saul, an American labor organizer trying to unionize the sweatshop where she works... The [original] score was influenced by Middle Eastern, Irish, Scottish, English folk, American honky-tonk, obviously jazz and ragtime and klezmer -- even Greek music of that day, and Broadway, too... It is now 'more impressionistic'."
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