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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: In the Heights — Street Scene, Spanish-Style
By Harry Haun
10 Mar 2008
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Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Mandy Gonzalez, Karen Olivo, Priscilla Lopez, Andréa Burns, Janet Dacal and Carlos Gomez.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | The Drama Desk pick for 2007's Best Ensemble — two dozen strong — stormed the Richard Rodgers stage March 9 in the Lin-Manuel Miranda-Quiara Alegría Hudes musical, In the Heights, and collectively made a case for a comparable Tony category for teamwork.
Other subliminal Tony messages were imparted as well — most of them centered squarely on Miranda, the solar source for this salsa-shaking, hip-hopping exuberant musical. He wrote the songs — a Wurlitzer mix of merenge, reggae, rap and all manner of new Now Sounds. In addition, he rates a "Conceived by" credit line (having written the first draft of the book while a sophomore at Wesleyan), and he sets the over-the-top energy level for the show as its narrator, Usnavi, who runs a bodega around which the neighborhood conflicts twirl.
He literally lunges onto the stage, scatting away the local graffiti artist from his store like a common alley cat, and immediately begins rapping out a surging, insistent sound alien to Broadway ears (but refreshingly welcome for that), and his 23 cohorts on stage follow his pulsating lead, abetted by Andy Blankenbuehler's hard-charging choreography.
It's not surprising, given the level of energy at which the cast is laboring, that the show short-circuits toward the end of the first act, plunging the stage into pitch-blackness. But this is the 21st century, and it soon flickers back to life like fireflies via cellphone screens.
Basically, this is another midsummer stoops-eye view of life, death and lottery — not unlike Elmer Rice's Street Scene, only moved uptown to the Washington Heights barrio under the George Washington Bridge. This universe, by Anna Louizos' design, consists of three shops cramped together on an unprepossessing street corner — a gypsy cab service whose owner (Carlos Gomez) wants to cash in his chips to help daughter (Mandy Gonzalez) through Stanford and into a better life than he has had; Usnavi's bodega; and a Salon Unisex run by a rent-worried diva (the hysterically funny Andréa Burns).
The dreams and concerns of the denizens are human-size and universal. The matriarch of the block, Usnavi's grandmother-in-name-only (movingly played by Olga Merediz), longs to return to her Dominican Republic roots. His teenage cousin (a delightfully dizzy spin by Robin De Jesús) makes a fumbling play for a long-stemmed beauty-shop worker (Karen Olivo) who's also eyeing the exit — for an exposed-brick Greenwich Village pad, which was heaven for out-of-towners and My Sister Eileen 67 years ago. And so it goes.
Although it is an ensemble piece — with everybody having their own story to tell — Miranda is the life force that illuminates the work, in every sense. He has written his own ticket to stardom, and it has already won him a Theatre World Award and the Clarence Derwent Award. The performance he gave when the show was done last year at 37 Arts rolls off naturally and effortlessly like the constant torrent of rap words coming out of his mouth.
At the end of the evening, he retook the center of the stage a last time, mike in hand, and said with a deliberate and measured fashion: "Forgive . . . me . . . for . . . speaking . . . slowly. I will never want to forget this moment for as long as I live." Then he proceeded to bring out for bows the design team and key people who helped the show happen. They raced out down an uninterrupted gauntlet of high-fives from the wet-eyed cast.
Two unsung and largely unseen champions who were unsaluted were the lead producers Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller. In the Heights is a continuation, begun with their Tony winners Rent and Avenue Q, of the quest to enlarge the boundaries of Broadway.
The last person Miranda thanked was the teenage-looking 31-year-old who directed the show, Thomas Kail. "I met this guy in the Drama Book Store basement six blocks up in the summer of 2002," he recalled, "and he said three things to me: 'Usnavi should be a narrator. You should start with In the Heights and not make it the third song. And you are perfectly hip-hop — you should play Usnavi.' And he was right on all three counts."
He used a movie allusion to introduce Kail, "One of his favorite movies is 'It's a Wonderful Life' and so I say — to the richest man in town, our friend and our director."
Buttoning up the evening, Miranda signed off with what seemed to be the sentiments of everyone on the stage: "Ay! Mama! What do you do when your dreams come true?"
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Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Sarah Paulson and David Hyde Pierce, Anthony Rapp, Sherie Rene Scott and Kurt Deutsch, Brian d'Arcy James, Heidi Blickenstaff and Michael Berresse, Sutton Foster, Stephen Schwartz, Angela Christian and Thomas Kail
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
A veritable caravan of mini-vans carried first-nighters to the Chelsea Piers, where a band was in full salsa-seasoned swing 'n' sway and a spread of Spanish delicacies was laid out.
Interviews were conducted at the opposite end of the vast waterfront ballroom from the orchestra — which was not nearly far enough — but a happily hectic hub was had by all.
"I was trying to write the show I would have died to see when I was a little kid," Miranda offered by way of explaining his inspiration for creating In the Heights. "I clung to Morales in A Chorus Line, I clung to Raul Julia in Nine — and I always wanted more. I wanted more Latinos on stage because I knew our music belonged on Broadway — and so here we are."
Getting to Broadway was the rub, and it required considerable rewriting and reworking of the show after it bowed Off-Broadway. "There are four new songs in Act II," he was quick to point out. "We really decided to take it slowly — it was perverse — we took our time in Act II. Most shows, when they go to Broadway, they're, like, 'What do we cut? What do we cut?' With this, we cut two songs, but we added four. And we were really, like, 'Let's take our time.' The audience is okay with spending time with these characters, and so we did our best to just really tell those stories as honestly as we could. That was our goal." Continued...
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