On Wednesday, May 27th at 8pm (check local listings for details), Great Performances on PBS presents a dazzling documentary "In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams". This special will go down as the greatest commercial of all time for a Broadway musical, that took an enormous risk, moving from Off-Broadway to Broadway and running off with the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical.
This special looks unlike anything that we've seen on PBS and a little bit of research told me why. The company that filmed it, Radical Media, are the people responsible for filming the HD last performance of RENT on Broadway.
The show footage is glorious and the charismatic writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda is the freshest face to hit the boards in years. It's sad indeed that he's moved on and has left the Broadway show, but shows do go on and who ever thought that there would be a Phantom after Michael Crawford left the original London and Broadway productions of The Phantom of the Opera? Even the opening night reviews, read on camera to the producers by the show's press agent, focused on Miranda's star power.
What we have in this special are back stories on the cast and the preparation for the move to and premiere on Broadway They go into cast member's homes, their lives, their families and we get backstage into rehearsals and even into technical rehearsals, which build a nice tension. It's beautifully shot and edited and credit must be handed to Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller, who are executive producers of the PBS piece along with Jill Furman- all three are also lead producers of the Broadway show.
The up-close 
'talking head' shots of all the players, have a real MTV, reality 'style' feel to them and one of the little story highlights is Priscilla Lopez at Sardi's, getting inducted onto the famous wall with her caricature. Unfortunately, Max Klimavicius is not named in a overlay, but is responsible for the choices of who goes on the wall and is a valuable player, important to Broadway itself. It's also hard to believe that with all her credentials, it took this long to get on the wall, but how great for her and for the In the Heights cast. Touching stories abound, but of particular interest, might be Karen Olivo, who takes a deep breath and knows that her future hinges on what happens with this show. As you can imagine, she could never have seen Anita in West Side Story coming at her and she'll probably be walking off with a Tony Award on Sunday June 7, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (although she does have stiff competition from Billy Elliot's Hadyn Gwynne and Carole Shelley).
