Rags comes with an impressive pedigree: music by Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie), lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell), and book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof). So why does this musical—which premiered on Broadway in 1986 and closed after only four performances—feel so amateurish?

The tangled saga of Eastern European immigrants arriving inNew York Citycirca 1911 plays out like an overly long education play, the sort you would view at theEllis IslandMuseumto learn a quick and entertaining overview of that part of American history. Assimilation, the gathering tide of unionism,Lower East Sidetenements, Tammany Hall, Jewish discrimination, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—they’re all here, played out with the depth of a brochure.

Having gone through several rewrites and revisions since its inception, Rags is once again debuting a new version, this time at Lyric Stage. Before his death last year, Joseph Stein further reworked the show’s book. In partnership with Charles Strouse (who was sitting four seats away on the night I attended), founding producer Steven Jones, director Cheryl Denson, and music director Jay Dias are presenting the updated edition with a large, fine cast.

It is the cast that brings the spark to this production. Amanda Passanante, tiny in stature but tremendous in voice, is the show’s heroine, Rebecca. Left behind inRussiayears ago when her husband set sail forAmerica, she has now escaped the Cossacks and landed in theNew Worldwith her young son, David (the precociously adorable Chet Monday). Unable to locate her husband, Rebecca takes a job sewing in a sweatshop and there meets Saul (a solid Brian Hathaway), a union supporter. He encourages her to learn English and fight with him for fair working conditions, and they soon fall in love. This is, of course, the cue for Rebecca’s husband Nat Harris (née Nathan Hershkowitz, played blandly by G. Shane Peterman) to arrive and reclaim his family.

Rebecca and Saul’s romance is the show’s backbone, but unfortunately Nathan’s entrance doesn’t provide tension so much as deflation. He has been working these past years with “Big Tim” Sullivan to quell the union vote and shed his foreign identity. Rebecca’s thick accent and old fashioned customs, not to mention her unfavorable immigrant friends, could destroy every Yankee dream he’s worked so hard to build. But instead of showing us this struggle, Nathan succumbs to pure villainy. There’s never any wonder why Rebecca would leave this heartless, superficial, evil man and reunite with the encouraging, loving, respectful Saul.

As a woefully underused subplot, Kristin Dausch (last year’s Flora in Flora, the Red Menace) plays Bella, a young Jewish woman who befriends Rebecca on the boat ride fromRussia. Sheltered by her overprotective father, Avram (Jackie L. Kemp), Bella is forbidden to explore her new, unfamiliar home or reunite with Ben (Jonathan Bragg), an idealistic man whom she also met on the boat and who has promised to marry her. We’re denied Dausch’s powerful belt until the end of the first act, when her frustrations with her ultra-traditional father explode in an angst-ridden rendition of the title song.

If Rebecca and Bella’s stories were rescued from the two-dimensional realm and allowed to flourish, this show could deliver more of an impact. It’s a disjointed jumble of big ideas and small characters, stretched thin with meandering interludes, such as a Jewish interpretation of Hamlet. For every surprising musical jewel like Rebecca’s swingy, sultry “Blame It on the Summer Night,” there is a song like “Three Sunny Rooms,” a coy duet between Avram and a middle-aged fruit-seller that plays like a pale interpretation of Tevye and Golde from Fiddler on the Roof.

Indeed, many have propped Rags up for comparison against Fiddler, with some remarking that when the residents left Anatevka perhaps they ended up on Suffolk Street, peddling tin pots alongside Avram and David. With a book writer in common, it’s an easy hypothesis to draw. But the deeply ingrained themes of family and faith found in Fiddler are watered down to almost nothing in Rags. Even with rewrite after rewrite, the heart is still missing. Perhaps it was detained in customs?

All photos by Michael C Foster