`RAGTIME' PULLS OFF A TOUGH TRANSITION.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Theater Critic

Attempting to create the Great American Musical out of the Great American Novel is a tricky affair. Especially when that novel is a coolly ironic piece of semi-fiction like E.L. Doctorow's ``Ragtime.''

Transplanting Doctorow's impressionistic prose from page to stage was the formidable challenge facing Canada's Livent Inc., which has brought ``Ragtime'' to the Shubert Theatre for an extended run prior to its Broadway opening in January. A Broadway producer with less chutzpah (and bucks) than Livent's Garth Drabinksy might not have tried.

But with Frank Galati's incisive direction and the aid of a top-rank production team, the musical succeeds in finding the passionate center of Doctorow's witty, emotionally detached paragraphs. ``Ragtime'' turns the Shubert into a dazzlingly fluid procession of larger-than-life characters and mighty American themes that are just as compelling in 1997 as they were in 1906: racial injustice, immigrant aspirations, class conflict and self-reinvention (all of them cleverly hinted at by choreographer Graciela Daniele in the dazzling opening dance montage).

And though it tends to soften and sentimentalize, as $10 million musicals inevitably must, the show's overlapping sagas of three turn-of-the-century families emerge not in a nostalgic haze, but through a vital, contemporary sensibility.

Unlike Milos Forman's 1981 movie, Terrence McNally's adaptation gives equal weight to all three families, skillfully weaving a trio of tales into one seamless narrative, a kind of historical vaudeville show presided over by a Greek chorus of deities including auto magnate Henry Ford, anarchist Emma Goldman and educator Booker T. Washington. Though we see the show primarily through the eyes of the Little Boy (a smart, affecting Blake McIver Ewing), the narrative also rotates among the boy's imperious Father (John Dossett), empathic Mother (Marcia Mitzman Gaven) and Mother's idealistic Younger Brother (Scott Carollo).

Set against these paragons of Anglo-Saxon propriety are Tateh (John Rubinstein), a Latvian immigrant, and his young daughter (Danielle Wiener). Fresh off the boat from Ellis Island, Tateh and his child will claw their way toward the American dream.

But the show's soul and conscience belong to the third couple, composed of a charismatic Harlem piano player named Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Brian Stokes Mitchell), his fiancee Sarah (the actress known as LaChanze) and their illegitimate son, who come to taste the bitter dregs of their once-earnest hopes for equality. Full of pained dignity and unexpected sweetness, Mitchell and LaChanze earned ample tears from the mostly white opening-night audience - and not, it seemed, tears of sorrow alone.

It takes director Galati about 20 minutes to get all three stories up to speed. Once he does, the show zips forward like a freshly minted Model T (which makes a spectacular appearance midway through Act 1). Its lofty sentiments and raw emotions are better realized by Stephen Flaherty's resourceful, multitextured music than by Lynn Ahrens' lyrics, which could use a bigger splash of period flavor and less generic political rhetoric.

But its dynamic world is meticulously caught by Santo Loquasto's ingenious costumes and Eugene Lee's production design of 1900s architectural masterpieces and giant postcard reproductions of vintage Manhattan locales.

``Ragtime'' summons not only the sound of an era, but the spirit of an age.

THE FACTS

What: ``Ragtime.''

Where: Shubert Theatre, 2020 Avenue of the Stars, Century City.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; through Sept. 14.

Tickets: $35-$75. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Susan Wood and Jason Graae are two of the reasons why ``Ragtime'' at the Shubert Theatre lives up to its big billing.