Lear deBessonet is preparing to stage a Broadway revival of Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont Theater this fall, in her debut as artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater.
Previews are scheduled to begin September 25 ahead of an Oct. 16 opening, people familiar with the production said.
The 1998 musical was briefly revived on Broadway in 2009. In the fall of 2024, deBessonet mounted an acclaimed concert version at City Center — where she’s the outgoing artistic director of Encores! — starring Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, Shaina Taub, Colin Donnell, Nichelle Lewis and Ben Levi Ross. Casting for the new production isn’t final. A Lincoln Center Theater spokeswoman declined to comment.
Like Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s adaptation of their 2005 movie about Edward R. Murrow and McCarthyism, a Ragtime revival may resonate politically amid Trump’s mass deportations and his dismantling of diversity initiatives and American institutions. With a Tony Award-winning score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens and a Tony-winning book by the late Terrence McNally (adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s novel), Ragtime tells the intertwining stories of three American families in 1902: a wealthy white clan living in New Rochelle, N.Y.; a striving black family, led by a ragtime pianist; and an impoverished but upwardly mobile immigrant artist and his daughter.
“The show holds the promise and the wound of America right up next to each other so closely,” deBessonet told Christopher Barnard of Vogue before the Encores! engagement.
On July 1, deBessonet succeeds André Bishop, who retires as Lincoln Center Theater’s producing artistic director after 33 years at the high-profile, Upper West Side company. Bartlett Sher, a resident director there since 2008, will become executive producer. LCT, now marking its 40th year, comprises the Beaumont, Mitzi Newhouse and Claire Tow Theaters.
deBessonet, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, founded the Public Theater’s Public Works program, in which community members take classes and attend and participate in performances. (LCT recently hired another Public Theater alum, Maria Manuela Goyanes, to present new work in the Tow and elsewhere.) At Encores!, deBessonet is perhaps best known for directing an exuberant revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, which was a hit Broadway transfer in the fall of 2022.
In a challenging environment for nonprofit companies, LCT has held up better than most, thanks in part to its ample endowment. Its net assets increased 3 percent to $162 million in the year ending June 2024, according to a financial statement posted on its website. This past fall, it had a big seller in McNeal, which starred Robert Downey Jr. and was directed by Sher.
Although the Beaumont is a designated Broadway house, Lincoln Center Theater is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and pays actors less than the weekly commercial Broadway minimum of $2,638 during the initial run of its productions. Theatergoers who are LCT members are offered tickets to the company’s shows at discounted prices.
On April 21, the first Broadway version of Floyd Collins is scheduled to open at the Beaumont. It’s about a trapped cave explorer a century ago in Kentucky, with a beloved bluegrass-inspired score by Adam Guettel. Like Ragtime, Floyd Collins depicts an intimate tragedy that spawns a media circus, with music that many theater fans cherish and are eager to experience live.
