Ragtime Reviews

Washington Post- Highly Recommended

"...For pageantry is “Ragtime’s” brand. And Gardiner masters the form here, casting the parts, fictional and real, as emblematic cogs in an evolutionary demographic machine. The touchstone characters, all sensationally realized — Teal Wicks as a White patrician undergoing a feminist awakening; Bobby Smith as a Jewish immigrant with a gift for entrepreneurship; Awa Sal Secka as a Black woman of infinite devotion — animate those cogs hearteningly."

DC Theater Arts- Somewhat Recommended

"...Twenty-five years after its Broadway debut, the iconic musical Ragtime has been revived at Signature Theatre. Kudos to director Matthew Gardiner for undertaking a supremely ambitious work brimming with all that was best and worst about America’s Gilded Age: hope and despair, opportunity and savage repression, astonishing technological breakthroughs, and blighted lives. It’s a tall order for a small, intimate theater."

Washington City Paper- Highly Recommended

"...Ragtime is as close to an American musical epic as we have and its endurance is testament to its power. If Ragtime's inclusive revisioning of who gets to be American and share in the dream isn't enough of a salve for our sorrows, perhaps even temporarily, to hear its score performed by a 16-piece orchestra (under the baton of music director Jon Kalbfleisch) and a stellar ensemble of performers certainly should be. "It was the music of something beginning, an era exploding, a century spinning in riches and rags, and in rhythm and rhyme. The people called it Ragtime." This person calls it a smash."

MD Theatre Guide- Highly Recommended

"...Yet, this small dive into Signature Theatre’s production isn’t enough. How does one capture a production that simultaneously felt like light rippling through a stained-glass window or a glass of warm milk with honey? The energy hummed through this show like a live wire. The ensemble of actors, coupled with a thunderous orchestra backing them, was spellbinding. You don’t want to miss this one."

Theatre Bloom- Highly Recommended

"...All in all, this exceptional mounting of Ragtime makes for an incredibly delightful and moving night of theatre. Signature Theatre is shining again."