Broadway’s current revival of Ragtime will ride on the wheels of a dream with a national tour, set to launch in fall 2027 from Shea’s Buffalo Theatre in Buffalo, New York. Further tour stops are to be announced. The forthcoming tour will be the first union tour of the Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty-Terrence McNally musical to travel the continent since the original production closed its own final tour in 2001.
Director Lear deBessonet will reassemble her Broadway creative team for the tour, including choreographer Ellenore Scott, scenic designer David Korins, costume designer Linda Cho, lighting designers Adam Honoré and Donald Holder, sound designer Kai Harada, projection designer 59 Studio, hair and wig designer Tom Watson, and sensitivity specialist Ann James.
Casting, by The Telsey Office‘s Craig Burns, is to be announced. Tom Kirdahy, Kevin Ryan, Robert Greenblatt, and Lamar Richardson—with whom the Broadway run is produced in association—will produce the tour.
“Ragtime is one of the most ambitious musicals ever written, and it feels timelier than ever,” say Kirdahy, Ryan, Greenblatt, and Richardson in a joint statement. “What Lear deBessonet and this extraordinary company have created at Lincoln Center Theater is both epic in scale and deeply human. We couldn’t be more excited to share it with communities across North America.”
The revival opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater via Lincoln Center Theater October 16, 2025, and the multi-extended run is currently set to continue through August 2. The Broadway bow was preceded by a gala production at New York City Center, also directed by deBessonet and featuring much of the same cast. See what critics had to say about the Broadway bow here.
Based on a novel by E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime blends fact and fiction telling the story of New York City at the dawn of the 20th century, with a book by McNally, music by Flaherty, and lyrics by Ahrens. The story focuses on Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a Black man who buys a Model T Ford and sets off a chain of events that encompass all levels of New York City society, along with magician Harry Houdini, industrialist Henry Ford, celebrity party girl Evelyn Nesbit, civil rights leader Booker T. Washington, architect Stanford White, anarchist Emma Goldman, a Jewish Latvian immigrant who becomes a movie director, and an upper class white family living in suburban New Rochelle.
READ: The Making of Broadway’s Ragtime, an Oral History
The musical premiered on Broadway in 1998 following a pre-Broadway bow in Toronto, with an original cast that boasted Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, and Marin Mazzie. McDonald won the second of her six career Tony Awards for her featured performance as Sarah. Even in a year otherwise dominated by juggernaut The Lion King, Ragtime managed to also win Tonys for McNally’s book and Flaherty and Ahrens’ score, along with Brohn’s orchestrations.