There’s nothing like a Broadway musical that opens with three social classes literally standing in separate corners of the stage to remind you that subtlety is overrated…what an amazingly stunning opening number.

Ragtime is not here to whisper gentle metaphors about America’s growing pains. It is here to sing them at full volume, in perfect harmony, with a 30-piece orchestra and the most dynamic exquisite singing voices I have heard on stage.

Joshua Henry, Nichelle Lewis, and the company’s gorgeous singing, powerfully staged story of racism, and immigration will touch your soul.

Joshua Henry is a dynamic, compelling performer along with his partner, Nichelle Lewis as well as Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz and Ben Levi Ross…honestly everyone is superb.

Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow’s sprawling novel, Ragtime tries to fit the entire early-20th-century American experience into a three-hour musical and, astonishingly, mostly succeeds.

You get race, immigration, class struggle, radical politics, Henry Ford’s assembly line, and a cameo from Houdini, because why not.

It is like history class, if history class had better choreography and more modulated vibrato.

The music (by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens) swings beguilingly between ragtime syncopation and soaring Broadway balladry.

You’ll find yourself tapping your foot even as the lyrics remind you that the American Dream comes with interest and fees.

The plot, meanwhile, is a busy intersection where three stories collide, a wealthy white family from New Rochelle discovering empathy, an African-American pianist discovering rage, and a Latvian immigrant discovering that America is not the dream all immigrants imagine it to be.

By intermission, everyone’s disillusioned, and by curtain call, they’re all somehow harmonizing again which is about as realistic as anything else on Broadway.

Ragtime is the rare epic musical that manages to be both earnest and absurdly ambitious, a costume-drama pageant with a moral compass and a metronome.

Bring tissues as the racism, antisemitism, immigration issues and class discrepancies are as real today as during the early 1900s.

There is a sense of irony. Perhaps, bring cliff notes from  an AP U.S. History textbook for cross-reference.

Ragtime, while a tad long, is a theatrical must!

Ragtime Lincoln Center. Vivian Beaumont Theater. Running time 3 hours. Tickets now on sale through June 14th, 2026.