Rag

I left the theater emotionally exhausted. I think it was a matter of timing, or time and place. Seeing Ragtime performed by a cast of high school kids was far more of an experience to remember than I expected. I assumed the kids were talented, since this was the Frank Sinatra School for the Performing Arts, founded by Tony Bennett. The audition process is pretty demanding, or so I think I read some years ago when the place opened. But man, these actors and musicians were better than anything I could have expected. The only clue that this was not a professional troupe was when some of them showed their teeth and their braces sparkled under the lights.

Seeing these kinds in action brought back a flood of memories for me. I remembered the plays I took part in in high school and here in New York, where I played for Annie, an original show I can’t recall the name of, and other such shows. In high school I played Third priest in Jesus Christ Superstar, a show I still have memorized and which was essentially my New Testament gospel. That’s ironic since I attended a Jesuit high school and a Catholic grade school yet never in all those years was I expected to read or even comprehensively grasp the Bible in its entirety. This curious omission is contrary to many people I’ve known from other parts of the country who, even if they are not practicing Christians today, read every book of the Bible and even memorized lengthy passages. That sort of stricture was never even suggested by the Jesuits.

But it wasn’t just the memories that left me emotionally exhausted. It was the show itself, and the fact that kids were even performing it in the first place, no less that they were doing it so well. Ragtime is built on a tough, challenging scenario addressing matters of racism and brutality toward blacks in early 20th century America. Maybe I should not make this assumption but at my high school I don’t think we could have gotten away with doing a show that used the N word and referenced masturbation, among other occurrences of potentially R-rated material in Ragtime. If we had done a show like this it would probably have been sanitized, something I feel reasonably certain was not done for this production. Hearing that N word as it was used in this show felt like I was being bitten.

I admit and am aware that much of my admiration for the performance stems from the fact that these were kids, and that I went into it thinking I was there to support and encourage their efforts. Instead I was completely transported right from the opening sounds. My expectations would have been higher if it was Broadway or the like, and there were indeed some tell-tale signs that this was not a professional troupe. The sound levels were particularly bothersome not just for me but for the two friends I went with. All the actors wore wireless microphones either on the top of their heads or on the sides of their faces. From certain angles the latter arrangement made it look like the mics were sticking out of their noses, while the former placement looked like some kind of alien hairpiece. But appearances aside these mics did not seem to accomplish an even distribution of sound, which is what you would expect of them. We never used any such mics in the shows I did. That is not meant to be held up as any kind of example but I think it demonstrates that just because everybody in theater seems to be doing mics this way today does not necessarily make it the best solution.

I did not notice any real stage snafus, though one of the friends I went with said he saw someone pushing a metal staircase and neglecting to hit the brakes, nearly sending it off the stage. I missed that but being told of it reminded me of one of the weirder screw ups from Jesus Christ Superstar. There is a scene where Judas hangs himself, and the way it was staged was actually pretty eerie for how much it made it look like the kid who played that role really did hang himself. He climbed a ladder and placed a noose around his neck, then fell down where he landed on a stool that the audience could not see. Well, one night that stool fell over and the poor guy who played the part did everything he could not to let it show. He was not actually hanging from the rope but he was made considerably uncomfortable by the tension created by not having that stool underneath him. The scene faded and the next one began on another part of the stage where the actors could not see that Judas was wrangling with the rope around his neck, trying his hardest to get out of it before he choked. Somebody came onstage to help him get out of it, as the audience patiently held its collective breath.

Nothing like that happened at Ragtime. My gripes about the sound quality are my only real complaints, and I suspect it might have made a difference to have been sitting farther back. The orchestra was quite good, though they were sounding a little tired toward the end. There was one singer who was pretty awful, but I took that as a positive sign of character, and affirmation that this really was a high school play. Aside from that one singer, who was onstage for a blessedly short span of time, I could not point out anyone in that show who was anything but excellent.

The Frank Sinatra School school has been at its present location for about 9 years. This was the first time I ever set foot inside. After it opened I heard time and again that the theater was extraordinary not just for a high school but simply on its own merits. It is, indeed, a nicer space than some of the Broadway theaters I have seen, but of course it is a lot newer than those storied structures. I don’t know anyone who can remember what was on that piece of land before but everyone who saw the school being built remembers seeing things like “OLD BLUE EYES” and “FRANK SINATRA” spray painted all over the building’s innards, in places that would be invisible when the building was complete. The construction workers did it. It’s like Frank Sinatra is in the soul of the building.

The two friends who went with me to this show happen to be friends with a descendant of Frank Sinatra, who they are expecting to see in Los Angeles a few weeks from now. I asked them to ask that person if she knows anything about the Sinatra that used to live upstairs from me in this building. I don’t remember his first name now but I was told that he wanted nothing to do with the Sinatra name or legacy. It meant nothing to him, and he might have even been a little bitter about it. So I always wondered if he was horrified or otherwise aghast when it was announced that a school in Frank Sinatra’s name was going to be built on a spot that was basically right across the street from him. It must have felt like he could not escape his very famous family name.

The main reception area was spacious enough for a grand piano to stand without being hulking or conspicuous. Some might find such a flourish classy or at least appropriate for an arts school but I for one take some umbrage at the sight of a piano that no one ever uses and which serves as nothing more than furniture. But I’ll let it pass.

One bit of surprisingly bad planning was with the bathrooms. When are modern building planners going to arrange it so that there are not terminally long lines at the women’s rooms while men briskly amble in and out? Well, one women at this event had a solution. She just stomped into the mens room, announcing to all inside that she was doing this. No one objected, though she seemed certain enough of herself that I don’t think she would have cared if anybody did. I never said anything, though it felt a little off to be unzipping my pants and whipping out my junk with a woman standing right behind me. I went to a college that had unisex bathrooms and I never was comfortable with it. But I never said anything because I was afraid that doing so would have singled me out as a wuss or a sexist or… a something.

I have not connected much with the trend today of using whatever bathroom suits your gender identity. If I’m out of the loop on such things I guess it’s because I don’t share office space or go to work at a place where political correctness guides company policy. I did attend a meeting some months ago where everyone was invited to introduce themselves and what they wanted to be identified as: males, female, or something else. I don’t remember anybody saying anything very clever but the invitation to do so made me realize how long I’ve been away from the world of communal workspace and living.

Anyway, it was a hell of a show.

Ragtime