Ragtime is back on Broadway, at the Neil Simon Theatre, and two of its creators believe that its rich and compelling story about the calamitous changes in America in the early years of the 20th century is more relevant than it was when it debuted in 1998.

The musical follows the lives of a wealthy WASP family: Coalhouse Walker Jr., a radicalized black ragtime musician; and Tateh, an innovative Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe. Along the way, real-life personalities -- from Booker T. Washington to Harry Ford to Harry Houdini -- join the fictional tale.

“Look how far we’ve come,” says Lynn Ahrens, the musical’s lyricist. “We have an African-American president and a Latina on the Supreme Court. The country has gone through radical changes, and the show takes on this whole new meaning.’

In a song called “President,” Ahrens says, “a black woman asks the president for justice, and as a result, she gets killed. You look at the front pages of the paper today, and we’ve come so far, but we’re still fighting over immigration, civil rights and justice.”

Stephen Flaherty, who wrote the music, says that during the three-month run earlier this year at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., “The thing I love about it is even though you can call it a period piece, the themes are very current. We’re still trying to find a way to go forward as a nation.”

The musical is based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 bestselling novel, which spawned a film before it became a Broadway musical that picked up a couple of Tonys for best original score and book. Observes Ahrens, “Edgar [Doctorow] watched the Kennedy Center production and was over the moon.”

The revived Ragtime is very much the same as the original with a few trims to Terrence McNally’s book. But Ahrens and Flaherty say that Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s direction and choreography has made the show feel more intimate. And, according to Ahrens, the actors “feel like the people who live next door.”

“We wanted to create a production that was very visceral and contemporary,” says Flaherty,” while Ahrens adds, “Marcia’s very collaborative and communicative and asks a lot of questions. She put together a wonderful book for the cast with lots of facts and wonderful stuff about the era for the actors to immerse themselves in.”

The production’s lead actors include Quentin Earl Darrington as Coalhouse, Christiane Noll as Mother, and Robert Petkoff as Tateh. Flaherty says that Dodge’s emphasis on the characters -- both fictional and real -- in a rapidly changing America presents a shift away from the original. “A lot of the emphasis was on the spectacle of moving scenery and imagery,” he notes. “Even though this is spectacular, the human stories come to the forefront.”

A real Model T that was featured in the 1998 production has been replaced by something more abstract, for example. “We have a wonderful steel structural set that suggests different rooms and places,” Flaherty says. “It’s very impressionistic.”

Still, at the heart of a show called Ragtime it’s the musical genre it’s named for that provides the production’s lyrical foundation.

“I’ve played it since I was 12,” Flaherty says, observing that, “I couldn’t knock off Scott Joplin or do a take on Irving Berlin. The challenge was to make a fresh score that contemporary audiences would feel was the first time they’d heard it.”

Ahrens said that ragtime music, by its nature, is syncopated in a way that differs from the rhythms of conversational speech. “One of my goals was to make sure the sung words sound like dialogue,” so that a spoken line moves seamlessly into a sung lyric.

Ahrens and Flaherty say they would have been satisfied if Ragtime had not moved from Kennedy Center to Broadway. But raves initiated the transfer.

“I looked at the audience, crying and laughing and it was just the best of feelings,” Ahrens said. “I felt amazement and gratitude that something I wrote has remained viable and relevant.”

Ragtime is playing at the Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52nd St. For reservations, call 212-307-4100 or click here.