BWW REVIEWS: IN THE HEIGHTS Tour Really Heats Up Chicago's Winter

Those folks you will see sweating in Chicago's Loop for the next three weeks won't be working too hard, wearing too many clothes or worrying about the local real estate market. They will merely be lucky Chicago theatergoers, responding to the warmth, light and fire of the very first touring production of the 2008 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, "In The Heights." With all the tropical dance moves, sultry love ballads and fresh-faced performers this production features, Randolph Street outside the Cadillac Palace Theatre may as well be Miami Beach's Collins Avenue, Ninth Avenue in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, and a beach in Old San Juan, all movingly rolled into one.

It's Washington Heights on Independence Day weekend, and the northern tip of Manhattan is ablaze with the same stories that musical theater has told since day one--a boy wants the girl who works next door, another boy wants his boss's daughter, and everybody dances. Only this story is told with a fresh perspective, an exciting Latin dance score and an ending that can only be described as transcendent, pulsing with real human experiences of loss, transitions, decisions and searching for a sense of belonging, succeeding, and community building. This is not a perfect evening of theater, but it is a vital, refreshing and glowing one. I'll have one, please, and maybe a side order of that touching little moment over there.

If you are unfamiliar with "In The Heights," trust me when I say you will become more familiar with it in the future. It was announced this week that the show will be made into a motion picture directed by Kenny Ortega (known for "High School Musical," among other high profile projects). I also suspect that many top Latino recording artists and actors will want to become involved in the film, even though it will star the new-to-Hollywood Lin-Manuel Miranda, the young man who wrote the Tony and Grammy Award-winning music and lyrics and who starred in the original Broadway production and its double-CD album (as well as all of its pre-Broadway workshops and its off-Broadway debut).

The film's script will reportedly be written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, the young woman responsible for the show's book. Regrettably, that book is weak and somewhat unclear in the first act, though it rises markedly in clarity and intensity after intermission to the point of leaving audiences unable to breathe, gasping at key turns of events and, at Tuesday night's opening performance here, audibly weeping. Don't worry--the cheering happened too.

The plot of the show (autobiographical to both Miranda and Hudes, we are told), is that of a predominantly Latino neighborhood and its residents undergoing some major transitions during a mid-summer weekend. Usnavi, a young shopkeeper whose parents both died when he was young, is a native New Yorker of Dominican descent, enamored of a girl, Vanessa, who works in the beauty shop next door. Only he's so shy around her he can never ask her out, something his young cousin, Sonny, is only too happy to do on his behalf.  To complicate matters, Vanessa wants to move downtown, where the rent is cheaper. You get the idea. 

The other love couple in this show (how many traditions of musical theater can first-time writers honor?) concerns Nina, the daughter of a small business owner located across the street from Usnavi's shop, who returns from her first year of college with a secret. Her father's employee, Benny (who isn't Latino and therefore runs into some resistence from Nina's father in that regard) has to work to win both her love and her father's approval. He is African-American, just for the record, though "Fiddler on the Roof" certainly comes to mind here. 

This quartet of young lovers is surrounded by a cast of colorful Latino neighborhood characters("West Side Story," anyone?), including Carla and Daniela (Vanessa's co-workers), Graffiti Pete and Piragua Guy (other small business owners, you could say) and by Nina's parents, Kevin and Camila. In addition to cousin Sonny, Usnavi has in his corner Abuela Claudia, the older lady who helped raise him and who is the unofficial keeper of tradition, hard work and common sense for the block. 

Throughout a New York power blackout and the problems that heat can bring, this band of passionate, struggling, working class, urban, ethnic Americans is plunged from everyday minutiae to shattered dreams, to physical danger, to forbidden love and flirtations with wealth, sorrow and a kind of diaspora, yet it achieves a wondrous collective sense of triumph and closure where none seemed possible ("Rent," anyone? Combined with both "Guys and Dolls" and "Porgy and Bess?"). And they sing, and, oh, they dance! 

The Tony-winning choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler is pretty astounding in this production, full of street savvy and Latin ballroom flash. (One member of the ensemble, Sandy Alvarez, deserves his own spot on some star-making television dance show, pronto.) Those Tony-winning orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman sound pretty wonderful too, played by a pit orchestra of seven touring musicians and four Chicago ones. The set (designed by Anna Louizos) looks as remarkable here as it does onstage at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, with its multi-story brownstone residences towering above three remarkably detailed storefronts, all dominated by an image of the George Washington Bridge crossing the Hudson River to New Jersey. 

And the cast includes some performers who, thankfully, are not physical replicas of the originators of these roles, but who instead breathe likeability, singing talent and great humor and passion into their characters. As Usnavi (and filling Lin-Manuel Miranda's great big shoes), young Kyle Beltran occasionally looked like a skinny deer in headlights, but I caught every word of his fast, important rap/hip-hop lyrics and every heartbeat of his gulp-inducing love for Vanessa. He's a good guy. No wonder everyone in the neighborhood is on his side. 

As Vanessa and Nina, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer and Arielle Jacobs both sang well and acted with intelligence and heart, though neither was as heartstoppingly sexy as their admirers seem to think they were. Rogelio Douglas Jr. sang beautifully as Benny, and really made you feel his love for Nina and his passion for responsibility. Natalie Toro as Nina's mother was remarkable for her ability to make one forget the vocal performance of the legendary Priscilla Lopez in the role, and Daniel Bolero as Nina's father also sang intelligently and well, but was perhaps too well-scrubbed. Shaun Taylor-Corbett was appropriately spunky as Sonny, as was Isabel Santiago as beauty shop proprietress Daniela. And if Elise Santora is probably nowhere near the age of Abuela Claudia, she imbued her with gravitas, spirit and charm, transporting us to the Caribbean and beyond. David Baida stole the show with "Piragua," as he should.

If you care about the future of the American musical, you must see "In The Heights." But you probably knew that already. And that future is a lot more than just young authors and a multi-cultural milieu--it is a new way of combining known elements into something familiar and yet totally original. 

But why should the average theatergoer see it? Sure, it's got some rough patches in the expository sections, and there are no set changes or glamorous costumes. But believe me when I tell you that, for most of the second act, you won't be able to tear the attention of either your heart or your pulse away from the stage of the Cadillac Palace. Before you know it, these characters will have worked their way under your skin, and you will wax nostalgic for the place where you come from. Their hopes and dreams will become yours. You will find yourself on that stage. And in a world where they are no neat solutions, no happy-ever-after endings, you will learn that you will be ok. You will belong "in the Heights." It's a nice place to visit, and, I'll bet, it's a wonderful place to call home.

Broadway In Chicago presents "In The Heights" in a limited run December 15, 2009-January 3, 2010 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre (151 W. Randolph St., Chicago). For tickets call 800-775-2000 or visit www.BroadwayInChicago.com.  

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus