Broadway run of Kennedy Center's 'Ragtime' revival to end Sunday

Despite some admiring reviews and an unusually vigorous effort to keep it running, the Kennedy Center's revival of "Ragtime" will shutter on Broadway on Sunday, according to the show's producers.

The $8.5 million production, a streamlined version of the 1998 original, and directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, ultimately failed to garner the kind of box office momentum that would allow it to continue through the winter months -- the perennial graveyard for weaker Broadway shows. By the time it closes this weekend at the Neil Simon Theatre, it will have run for about 60 performances.

That the revival -- the first show created by the Kennedy Center to move to Broadway -- had been struggling was the worst-kept secret on Broadway. An intense debate swirled among the show's producers about whether a marketing strategy could be developed to sustain it as it tried to draw an audience, according to those involved in the discussions. Ultimately, the high running costs -- more than $500,000 a week -- were perceived as insurmountable, even after additional financing had been arranged, and the show's creators and others agreed to reduce their weekly takes.

"It never built the audience it needed to sustain it," said Michael M. Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, which was one of the show's producers by virtue of having created the revival last spring. (The center had spent $4.4 million on the musical's Washington engagement, but the money for the Broadway production was raised by the show's New York producers, led by, among others, Kevin McCollum and Emanuel Azenberg.)

The musical, with a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and a libretto by Terrence McNally, is an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's kaleidoscopic novel about the transformation of American society at the turn of the 20th century. Dodge's revival, which opened last April at the center's Eisenhower Theater, had a cast of about 40 and, just as important, a full orchestra with 28 members. (By contrast, the current Broadway revival of "A Little Night Music," starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, has only nine.)

The show moved to New York with its look and most of the Washington cast intact, and opened on Nov. 15. Many of the reviews were positive. But the lukewarm notice from Ben Brantley in the New York Times was viewed by some involved with the production as a serious handicap, especially because the show lacked a major star in any of the lead roles.