ABSTRACT
There has been a sharply divided critical response to the $10 million musical Ragtime, and I join the naysayers with regret. I would sooner celebrate the musical’s inauguration of its spanking new Broadway theater than damn it, even if the theater is named, in all corporate dullness, “Ford Center for the Performing Arts.” With a name as uninspiring as that—the new theater is an advertising vehicle for the Ford Motor Company—you feel it ought to be attached to a shopping mall in Ohio.
