Now in its sixth week on Broadway, “Ragtime” is running like clockwork — the actors nail their lines and notes, the stagehands set props like they were born doing it, and the whole production comes across so perfectly that the audience has no choice but to rise to their feet in a standing ovation when it’s over.
But Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the director and choreographer of “Ragtime,” is having a hard time letting go.
“I usually open a show and then jump back on the plane,” says Milgrom Dodge about her 20 years of staging shows all over the world (she’s overseen works from the U.S. to Canada to Great Britain to South Korea). “But for some reason, I can’t let this one go. I just love it so much.”
“Ragtime” marks Milgrom Dodge’s Broadway debut after its run at the Kennedy Center earlier this spring. “There’s a line in the musical where Father asks, ‘It’s only a year. Nothing much happens in a year,” she laughs. “It was a year ago this past Tuesday that we got the call to move to Broadway.”
But no jitters for Milgrom Dodge, even though she has overseen the massive production — which features a cast of 40 performers, an orchestra of 28 musicians, and a huge, multitiered set — since day one. “There was nothing intimidating. … I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
True, but she does like watching it roll.
