Theater assessment
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Two hours and 10 minutes, with one intermission. On the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W forty fifth St.
“Buena Vista Social Club,” the brand new musical that opened Wednesday night time on the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, is virtually a jumbo jet to Havana.
So transportive are the intoxicating Cuban music and spirited dance that it’s straightforward to forgive the present’s slightly wispy and cliched guide. The luxurious sights and sounds greater than make up for all of the burdensome exposition and Broadway-style one-liners.
Named after and that includes songs from the favored 1997 album, “Buena Vista Social Club” hops backwards and forwards by time — from the times main as much as the 1959 Cuban Revolution to the 1996 recording session at which the misplaced songs lastly grew to become immortalized.
We meet characters each of their optimistic youth, scraping by in nightclubs as they nurture desires of changing into world-famous musicians, and nearly 40 years later when a few of them have succeeded and others are nonetheless busking for free change on the sidewalk. Irrespective of the place they’re in life, all people longs for the long-gone Cuba they grew up in.
Director Saheem Ali, who elegantly weaves collectively each eras, and author Marco Ramirez have centered their present round Omara Portuondo (Natalie Venetia Belcon, stuffed with pathos and keenness), the “¿Dónde Estabas Tú?” singer who’s being courted by the upcoming album’s producer. Now a star, she’s prickly and laborious to persuade. Confronting the previous is painful for her.
However skeptical Omara ultimately dips her toes in and is emotionally reunited on the studio together with her previous friends from the shuttered Buena Vista Social Membership: Compay Segundo (Julio Monge), Rubén González (Jainardo Batista Sterling) and different geniuses.
After the Revolution, Fidel Castro closed down a lot of the golf equipment.
In flashbacks to a special world, Omara (Isa Antonetti) and her sister Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa) hustle to snare a recording contract, however their values in life and artwork start to half methods. Younger Compay (Da’von T. Moody) and Rubén (Leonardo Reyna) make an enthralling buddy act, and Reyna is a hell of a piano participant.
There’s a barely-there love story, too, involving younger Omara and Ibrahim Ferrer (Wesley Wray), a black performer who can’t escape background singing. As a result of particulars and growth are scant, the viewers by no means turns into particularly invested in it.
Actually, although, the plot is only a means to extra distinctive music. What will get our blood pumping is the fabulous onstage band that stirringly performs some 20 numbers, together with “Chan Chan” and “Dos Gardenias.”
The songs are accompanied by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck’s vibrant, fluid, full-bodied choreography that’s so athletic and rubbery it makes you query if the dancers even have bones.
I actually felt whisked away — a feat many exhibits set in worldwide locales fail to realize. The gang audibly inhales when the home windows slowly open on Arnulfo Maldonado’s set to disclose a spectacular ocean. Clearly it’s not actual. However at “Buena Vista Social Club,” for a pair hours, you’re lulled into believing you’re consuming a mojito in 90-degree warmth.
