The growing pains of a nation chronicled in this grand pageant of pre-World Ward I America, told in the exuberant words and music of the day. Like “Ragtime,” this nostalgic but thrillingly subversive revue takes us back to turn of the century America, when the innocent, slower-paced days of ice cream socials and hoop skirts are giving way to a bustling world of automobiles, electricity and the telephone, where American optimism and ingenuity run high in leaders like J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It is also a time of growing social turmoil, as increased immigration begins to change the cultural and ethnic makeup of the nation.
The story of these changing times blazes to life in a tuneful, high-spirited brew of popular songs from 1890 to 1917, performed by five archetypes of the period: Anna Held, the beautiful music hall star; Emma Goldman, the notorious socialist; a black domestic worker; a Chaplin-esque Russian immigrant; and the outrageous Teddy Roosevelt, the youngest man ever to be elected President. “Tintypes” is an epic work about the end of an era.