Rags the Musical review: Ambitious Fiddler on the Roof follow-up is timely but predictable

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Nick Curtis @nickcurtis15 January 2020

A barnstorming performance by Carolyn Maitland powers this timely but predictable musical about Jewish immigrants in 1910 New York.

She plays Rebecca, a young mother widowed in a pogrom whose sewing skills carry her into a new life among a rag-trade clan.

Bronagh Lagan’s audacious production accentuates the parallels between attitudes to immigration then and now. She covers up the schematic plot and mushy songs by Charles Strouse and Stephen Schwartz with energetic choreography from Philip Michael Thomas and big performances. All the youngsters are shiny-eyed idealists, the elders comically kvetching misanthropes.

Originally conceived by the writer of Fiddler on the Roof, Joseph Stein, as a sort-of sequel, Rags has been serially reworked since the original production closed four days after opening on Broadway in 1986.

This version by David Thompson is admirably compact, though ambitious for a 200-seat theatre: a cast of 16, including and a slick onstage four-piece klezmer band, augmented by piano and drums.

There are subplots about assimilation, workers’ rights and the Jewish contribution to New York’s musical and theatre culture, but also tone-deaf narrative tricks.

Rebecca’s suitors are a moustachioed, fat-cat exploiter and a ridiculously handsome Italian activist. Guess who she chooses? Maitland makes even these daft moments credible and compelling.

Until 8 Febrauary (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)

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