The Music Is Real Star in Imagined ‘Tin Pan Alley Rag’

The Pasadena Playhouse has a thing for fictional encounters between real-life Americans. Last year Henry Ford and Thomas Edison sat in the woods with Warren G. Harding in the lumbering “Camping With Henry and Tom.” In January, Joe Louis, Paul Robeson, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Jackie Robinson got together for “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting.” Now, Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin commune in Mark Saltzman’s “The Tin Pan Alley Rag.” “Rag” has a decided advantage over its predecessors--its characters made glorious music that needs no interpolation.

For sophistication of story, “The Tin Pan Alley Rag” is cousin to those hokey film bios in which the composer sits down at the piano and says: “And then I wrote . . . “ Saltzman laces the book with earnest talk of art, and the dialogue remains laughably unnatural, particularly for poor Scott Joplin (Harrison Page), who is as stiff as his starched collar. He drops by the music publishing offices of Berlin and Snyder in 1915, trying to get his opera “Treemonisha” published. In actual fact he was still hawking the opera when he died in 1917.

In Saltzman’s imagined meeting, Irving Berlin (David Norona) is thrilled to encounter the trained composer Joplin--the King of Ragtime, a title also assigned to the untrained, musically illiterate Berlin. What follows is an improbable conversation in which the two men relate scenes from their life stories (which are enacted onstage) and offer each other encouragement. Berlin, the ultimate commercial pragmatist, offers to publish the one catchy song he hears in Joplin’s opera. For his part, Joplin, 20 years Berlin’s senior, tries to get Berlin to move beyond writing popular songs. “Surely you must be aware that a gift like yours comes by once in a generation,” he says, sounding programmed. “You have spark. A genius spirit. Do the little song, but do the great songs as well.”

In the final analysis “The Tin Pan Alley Rag” asks us to concede that Irving Berlin--whom Cole Porter called the greatest songwriter of all time--did not live up to his potential because he did not write the serious music, the “American Rhapsody” that Saltzman’s Joplin urges him to write (Joplin, apparently, should have been pestering another Jewish songwriter by the name of Gershwin). That is a bit of a stretch, to say the least, and as a dramatic premise it’s perilously close to desperate. But it’s still hard to dislike “The Tin Pan Alley Rag” when it drops its pretensions and the singing starts.

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The charming opening number, written by Saltzman and composer Brad Ellis, is called “Pluggers on Parade.” Staged with joy by director Alan Bailey and choreographer Larry Sousa, it offers a mythically vibrant Tin Pan Alley in its heyday, when all the office doors were wooden with frosted panes, and “da paper” meant Variety. Here, songwriters and singers pour in from all directions to peddle their hopeful wares for Messrs. Berlin and Snyder. Their songs are full of “moon, spoon and June,” with everyone trying to imitate the style that came so naturally to Berlin, America’s hit-maker.

As Berlin, Norona looks exactly right, a wiry kid with wavy dark hair who emits a perfect balance of self-effacement and arrogance. He gets the lion’s share of the evening’s jokes and he fields them wryly. Stuck with the humorless role, Page looks like he’s posing for a Scott Joplin postage stamp the entire evening. Further, his opera comes off as laborious in the audition scenes that we see performed (with lyrics like, “Perhaps you’ll see her tomorrow / And then have no more sorrow / Do not grieve and complain / You’ll see her again”). At the end we do get to see an arresting scene from “Treemonisha,” which was finally fully produced in the 1970s.

From the pit, Ellis plays piano wonderfully for both of the fictionalized composers, particularly with Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” The ensemble is lively, especially in a mambo number staged to Berlin’s “Ev’rybody’s Doin’ It.” Karole Foreman stands out with her winning smile and lithe movements. When, however, did the talented Gerry McIntyre become Mugging Central?

Saltzman is not a stickler for facts--he has Berlin write the biggest hit of 1911, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” four years later during the course of the play. Worse, he makes the song the turning point at which Berlin forgoes the more serious music that Joplin supposedly urges him to write. Few composers embraced an innate commercial sense with as much talent as Berlin did, while retaining his own special genius and integrity. To suggest otherwise is to deny the pleasure that’s readily apparent whenever the characters start singing.

* “The Tin Pan Alley Rag,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Blvd., Pasadena, Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 5 and 9 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 24. $12.50-$42.50. (800) 233-3123. Running time: 2 hours.

Melissa Fahn: Dorothy Goetz, Salon Singer, Lula

Karole Foreman: Treemonisha, Freddie Alexander

Lita Gaithers: Monisha, Miss Lee

Christian Hoff: Hopeful Songwriter, Peggy, Valet

Leonard Joseph: Payton, Cuban Singer

Matt Landers: Ted Snyder, John Stark, Alfred Ernst

Gerry McIntyre: Williams, Ned, Freddie’s Father

David Noron~a: Irving Berlin

Harrison Page: James Cook, Scott Joplin

A Pasadena Playhouse production. By Mark Saltzman. Music by Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin. Directed by Alan Bailey. Choreography Larry Sousa. Musical direction Brad Ellis. Sets John Iacovelli. Lights Kevin Mahan. Costumes Zoe DuFour. Production stage manager Elsbeth M. Collins.