In The Heights
At last, at long last, something really, truly new on Broadway. Listen to the sounds coming out of the Richard Rodgers Theater. It’s the whoosh of a fresh breeze blowing out the cobwebs in the book musical and sweeping in the syncopated beats of merengue.
The can’t-stop-your-feet dance music from the Dominican Republic forms the perfect backdrop to this story of immigrants striving for the American Dream in the Uptown Manhattan Dominican Republic enclave of Washington Heights. The neighborhood in real life is dominated by two behemoths, the George Washington Bridge and Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital.
The former is dominates the one-set scene, just as the bridge overlooks the real neighborhood. It offers the promise of a better life in the leafy suburbs just across the Hudson River. The other huge structure, the hospital, is not mentioned or visible in this show, but its absence only means that these characters’ work lives are so marginal that even working as a hospital orderly would be a step up.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the triple-threat talent who conceived of the show, wrote the music and lyrics, and stars, means this as a tribute to the colorful cast, who spend much if not most of their time yelling, dancing, fighting and loving on their block, somewhere within shouting distance of the 181st Street A train.
Any comparison to that other ode to a crowded New York City neighborhood, Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1920s play Street Scene (which was turned into a great opera), however, only points up the limitations of In the Heights. The problem, in a nutshell, is the book: There isn’t one--or at least not one that holds the audience’s interest or contains any essential questions or drama or anything other than mildly interesting everyday situations.
Unlike the other musical about Hispanics in Manhattan, there’s not enough drama to justify our interest. When Arthur Laurents wanted to dramatize life on the tough streets of Hell’s Kitchen, he borrowed the plot from Shakespeare, thereby turning what could have been a standard tale of gang warfare into West Side Story.
Miranda means to give us something closer to Rice, a photographic snapshot of life as it is lived. But he would have been better off to have borrowed a page from Laurents and gotten a full-proof plot. As it is, there’s a girl who dropped out of a college, a $96,000 winning lottery ticket and a beauty salon forced out by higher rents. As if that weren’t enough, there’s a local blackout that lasts for a few days (in reality, the 1999 neighborhood blackout barely last 18 hours).
There’s a whiff of change in the air--gentrification is mentioned once or twice, in passing. But it’s only alluded to. (In real life, Washington Heights is benefiting--or suffering, depending on your point of view--from the increasingly upscale Inwood to the north and Harlem to its south.)
If book-writer Alegria Hudes forgot to construct a plot, Miranda gives plenty of tuneful music and a powerful, dynamic stage presence to his Broadway baby. As bodega owner Usnavi (there’s a hilarious explanation of his name) Miranda moves, sings and raps with intense energy, ably supported by a mostly terrific cast.
Especially fun is Andrea Burns, the salon owner. She looks like a drag queen and dresses like one; she has even perfected the arts of head rolling and "talk to the hand" signals. Handsome Christopher Jackson plays a car dispatcher who loves the boss’ daughter. Also notable is Robin de Jesus, who helps Cousin Usnavi and tries to play tough guy, to no good effect. Seth Stewart takes the minor role of a tagger and gives it some real heft thanks to his incredible dance moves.
In fact, the true standout in this production is the choreography. Andy Blankenbuehler might as well start rehearsing his Tony acceptance speech right now. He blends Spanish dances (merengue, salsa, tango, congo) with break dancing, scat, moonwalking, jitterbug and modern dance. By the end of the long curtain opener, you’ll be at the edge of your seat. The movements are beautifully intertwined and fluid in a way that Broadway hasn’t seen in years. The dance at a local club rivals Jerome Robbins’ dance at the gym in West Side Story--it’s that good.
If In the Heights doesn’t quite reach for the stars that so many of the characters are looking for, it gives us a bright new talent in Miranda. Here’s hoping on his next venture he wanders out of the barrio and stretches his imagination.
Richard Rodgers Theater
226 W. 46th St.
www.ticketmaster.com
