Ragtime review: Broadway revival still misses but has sensational singing

2 hours and 45 minutes, with one intermission.At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 W.

65th St.When massive musicals are downsized, the typical argument in favor of the choice is that fewer sets and dazzling doodads put the focus squarely on the music, lyrics and story.That’s certainly true of the latest revival of “Ragtime,” formerly a behemoth of an American history show, which opened Thursday night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.Only the effect this time, much like the Ford Model T featured in it, goes in reverse: Stripping away the excesses of Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Terrence McNally’s 1996 musical amplifies its many, many flaws.  A hefty chunk of the complicated plot — about the turbulent convergence of whites, blacks and European immigrants in New York state around the turn of the 20th century — is conveyed through hokey, animatronic, boilerplate narration that goes in one ear and out the other.Some more scenery would help clarify what’s going on.Its score is largely elevated merry-go-round tunes.But the best songs, the anthemic “Wheels of a Dream,” “Back to Before” and “Make Them Hear You,” which can be so rousing as concert stand-alones, are vague and generically sadspirational (“Go out and tell our story! Let it echo far and wide!”) when sung back to back with little to look at but the Beaumont’s vast emptiness.

One ballad after another.And there are so many rapid-fire events in the overstuffed second act — arson, a move to Atlantic City, a cryptic prediction of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a pointless baseball ditty, a film shoot, a brutal tragedy and a borderline comic epilogue in which we matter-of-factly learn almost everyone is dead — that the audience is left with little time to feel anything but whiplash.All that said, this revival of “Ragtime,” barely directed by Lear deBessonet, goes back to before in one extraordinary area: its stupendous cast.The original Broadway production i...