‘In the Heights’ Stands Tall
By Elysa Gardner
NEW YORK — In the Heights (*** out of four), which opened Sunday at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, is not a great musical. But it’s about as impossible to dislike as an adorable puppy.
Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda, 28, who also wrote the music and lyrics and stars in it, the show focuses on a group of Latin Americans living and struggling in Manhattan’s Washington Heights and features a score that blends Latin, pop and hip-hop textures. Most of the characters are young, and some of them rap.
If you’re thinking an uptown Rent or an updated West Side Story, think again. Heights already has been cited alongside two other off-Broadway transfers, last season’s multiple Tony Award winner Spring Awakening and this year’s superb Passing Strange, as evidence of a more progressive and culturally eclectic spirit in musical theater.
But for all its youthful energy, Heights is ultimately a sentimental journey, and a safe one. True, its outcome is less predictable or hokey than the too-neatly constructed first act would suggest, but Quiara Alegria Hudes’ book is no more clever or daring than that of your average Disney screen adaptation.
More crucially, Miranda’s score is short on the melodic punch that’s a vital element of any memorable musical. However well Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman’s zesty arrangements and orchestrations serve them, his songs are at best showcases for the rhythmic and harmonic savvy of the cast, and at worst banal vehicles for the empty, American Idol-style showboating increasingly embraced on Broadway.
Still, I dare you to resist Heights’ endearing characters, from Miranda’s unsinkable Usnavi — named by his Dominican parents in a heartfelt but slightly confused tribute to the USA that yields one of the show’s better jokes — to the doting, Cuban-born senior citizen who raised him, played with a big voice and a bigger heart by Olga Merediz.
Priscilla Lopez and Carlos Gomez are equally winning as an industrious middle-aged couple from Puerto Rico concerned about their daughter, whose studies at Stanford University are thwarted by financial concerns, and who is falling in love with one of their employees, a twentysomething black man.
Mandy Gonzalez and Christopher Jackson are sturdy and attractive as the young lovers. But they’re outshone by Karen Olivo’s gorgeous, sassy girl from the ‘hood and Robin De Jesus’ goofily lovable performance as Usnavi’s impish 16-year-old cousin.
Another key player is choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, whose street-savvy stylings and exuberant production numbers should make him a front-runner when this season’s Tonys are handed out.
In the end, though, Heights’ greatest asset is not its shiny surface but its warm, soft center. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.