Rags

Why Watch Rags

Many have experienced mixed feelings of hope, apprehension, excitement, and loneliness as one sets off to build a new life in a new city. Rags, set in the early 1900s in New York, allows the audience to resonate with these feelings of the characters while being exposed to the difficult, often painful immigrant experience during that period of time. It’s awe-inspiring to watch the struggle and growth of the protagonist as a mother, partner, activist and a Jew over the course of the musical. The sub-plots, involving a myriad of characters, are just as engaging and heart-wrenching, weaving across tales of love, pride, bitterness and the fight for justice.

Tony Award-winning playwright Joseph Stein has written a variety of plays for Broadway, including Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba. Stein’s ability to produce deeply touching dramas with a certain amount of gritty humor involved awarded him a spot in the Theatre Hall of Fame.
After it’s successful run in the past year at the Hope Mill Theatre, Bronagh Lagan brings this five-time, Tony-winning musical to the Park Theatre. Lagan has been directing since 2008, well known for her productions of Broken Wings and Night at the Oscars. Accompanied by the ravishing score by Charles Strouse, known for his work on Broadway favorites Annie and Wicked, this musical needs to be on your must-watch list!

The Story

Rebecca and her young son David set out from their home in Russia to Ellis Island, in search of her husband Nathan, who left for America years before and never wrote back to his family.
During the journey, she comes across other Jewish immigrants and they together discover that America does not deliver what they thought it promised. Mutually experiencing disappointment and tragedy, labor inequality and a puzzling uncertainty about cultural identity, the immigrants strive to make a place for themselves in the USA.

Good for

Teen and Adult Audiences | Fans of Joseph Stein | Lovers of musicals and tragic plays