Disguised as a two-for-one musical biography, Tin Pan Alley Rag deepens as it lengthens. The show revolves around a dreamed-up encounter between two of America’s very real great composers: Messrs.  Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin. In some ways, the meeting transpires like you might expect. The two great men recount the details of unlikely rises, the backstory on revolutionary musical hits, and the pain of loss that nothing can reverse. This is a tale of the highs and the lows that make any brilliant career worth telling about.

What changes the situation is the fact that Joplin (Boatman) needs something from Berlin (Therriault). After taking the musical world by storm and accomplishing greatness, he wishes for more. Rather than continue to write ragtime, he wishes to evolve his own beast. Joplin writes an African-American opera. And he wants Mr. Berlin to back its staging. Nobody else will, but Joplin needs to see the project realized to honor his late wife, who he loved beyond all reason.

As the night moves on, it becomes clear that Berlin and Joplin are uncannily similar. Berlin is a Jewish immigrant who escaped the pogroms of Imperial Russia. Dirt poor, he’s slept on the hard streets of the Lower East Side. Berlin spent years as a singing waiter before he was discovered, teaching himself to play piano in free time. Joplin represents the first generation of black Americans born after emancipation. He traveled America, having to work at brothels and saloons, until a publisher released his first song. The music sparked a ragtime craze. This craze illuminates the show’s foundation. At its core, Tin Pan Alley Rag is a hike into the heart of Americanism. Ragtime was the first originally American music. It was, as Joplin says, “A declaration of musical independence”, away from Europe and its traditions. There’s nothing more quintessentially American than the rags-to-riches story. Both Berlin and Joplin embody as well as quantify this ideal.

Berlin and Joplin are at their best when they start jamming. What do two geniuses do when they meet? Physicists talk physics. Scholars converse in dead languages. Musical virtuosos, however, get to playing their instruments. Here, Berlin and Joplin contest among themselves for the title “King of Ragtime”. The resulting session is a great culmination. Who’s tune is best? They’re both melodious royalty.

Certain modest flaws hamper the production. Boatman, afflicted by misguided direction, delivers some of his lines more like a missionary preacher than someone selling an opera. Joplin pursues a high-minded ideal, artsy grandeur over jingly sell-outs. At least Joplin seems to know that he’s dripping with over-intonation, however. Just as the sermon reaches its zenith, illness topples him. Similarly, the Treemonisha opera ballet sequence is more dull than beautiful. Further, the blocking of the memory scenes is a tad off. The one composer seamlessly enters the past and explains pivotal moments in his own life. He narrates at first, then he lives the moment. The other stands stiffly in a darkened corner. One feels that if they belong in the scene, it should be as participant and not viewer. The audience does the viewing. Cushy seats are for viewers, lit stages are for actors.

Strong supporting talent lends a respite from the mano-a-mano of the musical minds. Derrick Cobey plays the protective father who tries to most comically to push his little girl away from a marriage with the worldly Joplin. James Judy has a turn as the German maestro that endows our protagonists with the handshake of peerless musicians. Judy’s scene is both humorous and illustrating. He and Joplin dissect music and culture over a piano. Jenny Fellner is wonderful as Berlin’s love, Dorothy Goetz. And the plugger parade that deliver its charming lyrics with gusto definitely deserve laughs.

Whatever else it is, Tin Pan Alley Rag is, at length, a good show. Good music, good drama, good time. Mark Saltzman’s thought experiment runs rocky when it nears unwanted formulae. But it’s as solidly engineered as its inspiration: scrappy little piano boys who became big American legends. Tin Pan Alley Rag is an excellent show, and an even better tribute. To Joplin, to Berlin, and to the country that gave them life.