Original RAGTIME Cast Will Reunite in 2018 for 20th Anniversary Actors Fund Benefit Concert

We will indeed go back to before in 2018!

On a recent episode of Seth Speaks On Broadway!, Actors Fund Chairman and original cast member of Ragtime, Brian Stokes Mitchell revealed that the the original company will reunite this year in celebration of the show's 20th Anniversary.

The one-night-only concert will benefit the Actors Fund. There is no word yet on when the concert will take place.

Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty. Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in the United States in the early 20th century: African Americans, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; upper-class suburbanites, represented by Mother, the matriarch of a white upper-class family in New Rochelle, New York; and Eastern European immigrants, represented by Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia.

The musical had its world premiere in Toronto, where it opened at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts on December 8, 1996, produced by Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky and his Livent Inc., the Toronto-Production Company he headed. The US premiere was at the Shubert Theatre, Los Angeles in June 1997. The musical opened on Broadway on January 18, 1998 as the first production in the newly opened Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Directed by Frank Galati and choreographed by Graciela Daniele, Ragtime closed on January 16, 2000 after 834 performances and 27 previews.

The original cast included Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, Peter Friedman and Audra McDonald, who were all nominated for Tony Awards, and also included Judy Kaye, Mark Jacoby and Lea Michele.