In the Heights

In a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it season Blackout brings out In the Heights , and entertains us with  a joyous display of a slice of life in a US barrio in New York.

In the Heights won four Tonys including Best Musical. While there’ve been professional productions around the world, it’s Broadway success has never translated outside of Broadway (though a film version is supposedly in the works). So it’s very welcome that an amateur company is giving us a chance to see what all the fuss was about.

The show is set in New York’s Washington Heights, which is home to a tight knit community of Latin Americans. There’s no plot as such, rather it’s a look at the day-to-day doings of the community. It’s like a Latino version of Rent, swapping the trannies, bohos, and HIV for hard working (heterosexual) immigrants, racism, and salsa. Like Rent, there’s even the death of a major character that is a figurehead of the community. In another sense it has echoes of Fiddler on Roof, in focusing on a certain group in a village setting.

Director Cierwen Newell does a great job pulling the show together and helping us keep track of who’s who. Having the cast deliver their sung soliloquies downstage works well, given the big space of the theatre and the upstage set. Musical Director James McLanders (assisted by Kieran Norman) also do a great job with the music, realising the Latino grooves and bringing out some great harmonies from the cast.

The highlight for me from the creative team is Daniel Lavercombe’s choreography, which is sensational and worthy of a Tony Award:  it’s worth seeing the show just for the dancing. How the cast managed to belt out those tunes and dance those steps at the same time is a wonder. Daniel is also on stage playing “Graffiti Pete” and it’s a role in which he shines.

The set is also an amazing piece of work. I couldn’t find a credit in the programme for who designed it but kudos to them.

The cast is uniformly good. They all keep their accents and characters realistic. Due to the many characters this is a show that gives amateurs a chance to shine, as each character gets roughly equal stage time.

No doubt you’ll have your own favourites but for me the following were the standouts: Anthony Chester as Usnavi, the owner of the convenience store (New Yorkers want us to call them “bodegas”) - hard to believe this was the same man who was the meek and finicky Man in Chair in Holroyd’s Drowsy Chaperone; Irene Toro as hairdresser Daniela (she sizzles in her numbers); John Hanna as Limousine owner Kevin Rosario (bringing great dignity to his role, especially recalling his father’s taunts of “useless”); Katie Griffiths as Camila Rosario (so easy to make her role a stereotype but she makes her human); Emma Joseph as junior hairdresser Carla (makes her funny lines work); Stephen Helies as the Piragua Guy (a much better version of La Boheme’s Parpignol, selling ice treats instead of toys); Douglas Bryant as Benny is the token white character and gives his role great feeling. He is a foil to the “reverse racism” Rosario throws at him and his playing and singing of the character never feels fake – which it could easily be given his scenes.  Dancer highlight is Sarah Kalule as Yolanda. Just watch her burn up the floor in the nightclub scene.

And another shout-out to the hard working Ensemble.

Overall there is a lovely earnestness and joy in the performance from all the cast. The show really lights up when the Latin grooves kick in and the dancing starts. Highlights are “96,000”, “The Club” and “Carnaval del Barrio”. Rapping is heavily featured in the show and is in the style of Macklemore or Eminem, and there are some tongue twister traps amongst them. Congrats to Anthony Chester and Stephen Helies for their Latin rap duet in Act 2. 

I had difficulties not with this production but with the show itself. The episodic nature of the book and large number of characters gave the show a soap-opera feel, and at times it comes across as “Neighbours goes to Salsa”. The hip-hop and rap at times came across as the composer doing a rough draft of his next show: Hamilton.  There are other issues I had which I won’t go into here. Paradoxically I still had some affection for the show (I think it may have something to do with the way the cast performed it), and let’s just leave it at that.

What can’t be denied is that this cast and crew bring great life and love to the material, and that in itself makes for an entertaining night.

Peter Novakovich