John Rubinstein, Tateh in Broadway's Ragtime since December 1998, will play his last performance Aug. 1.
Tony Award-winner Michael Rupert will be gliding into the role of the struggling immigrant in the Tony Award-winning musical, at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
The now silver-haired Rubinstein originated the title role in Pippin in the 1970s and won a Tony Award for Children of a Lesser God. He played Tateh in the U.S. premiere of Ragtime, in Los Angeles.
Rubinstein's wife, Jane Lanier, left Livent's other Broadway show, Fosse, July 18 to return to Los Angeles to be with her kids when the school year begins.
* Rupert, who won a Tony Award for playing Oscar in the 1986 revival of Sweet Charity, and was also Tony-nominated for Falsettos and The Happy Time, appeared in the Ragtime national tour that began in Washington DC in 1998 and continued to Minneapolis, Seattle and Boston. It closed in Beantown in spring 1999, six months after almost shutting down in Minnesota due to Livent's financial woes.
Rupert was to repeat his performance in the new Pace Theatricals tour beginning in August 1999 in Houston, but the Broadway spot opened up and he was shifted into it.
Jim Corti (the original Houdini on Broadway, and a Broadway Tateh understudy) is Tateh in the new national tour (opening Aug. 3 in Houston) and Bernie Yvon (who was Houdini in the previous Rupert tour of Ragtime) is the new Houdini on Broadway.
