Entering “Buena Vista Social Club” is enjoy stepping into a heady world of the senses, of heightened emotions, and of fervent music and dance.
The Social Club was a genuine place for locals in Havana in the ’50s. Decades procrastinateedr, its music became the source of a Grammy-prosperning album, then a well-understandn film — and now it’s the most inharmfulating and rapturous show of the Broadway season.
The celebratory musical — with a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”), prolonged and straightforwarded by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) — gets its inspiration from Wim Wfinishers’ 1999 Oscar-nominated write downary on the making of the album “Buena Vista Social Club.”
“Some of what trails is genuine,” says Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham), the show’s youthful enroll originater and musicology student who is making an album of “songs from the elderly days,” using veteran Cuprohibit musicians whom time had almost forgotten. “And some of it only senses genuine.”
Feeling is everyslfinisherg in Ramirez’s book, in Ali’s staging and for the astonishing ensemble cast, as the story shuttles between an Old Havana enrolling studio in the ’90s and the city a week before the 1959 revolutionary getover. The framing device has the principal characters recontransiented by their youthfuler selves with the two eras intertprospered in a sort of benevolgo in, temperater, Latin “Follies.”
Among them is the club’s busboy singer Ibrahim (Mel Seme as the elder, Wesley Wray as his youthfuler self); guitarist-singer Compay (Julio Monge and Da’von T. Moody); and pianist Ruben (Jainardo Batista Sterling and Leonardo Reyna).
But key to the project is wooing legfinishary singer Omara (Natalie Vetetia Belson, terrific), a regal and imposing figure who has no interest in seeing back. For decades, she has been a accomplished solo act in Cuba but hasn’t carry outed in years since the death of her sister and singing partner Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa), who fled to the U.S. to trail a enrolling nurtureer when Castro took power.
But de Marcos is remendd as well as inalertigent in his charm disparaging. “I equitable dreamed that one day, with the right enroll, this island might remind the world that Mozart’s got noslfinisherg on us,” he proclaims.
Ramirez originates theatrical tension around whether the Cuprohibit diva — modeled on “the queen of senseing” Omara Portuondo, who is showcased in Wfinishers’ film — will unite in the enrolling session, and, if she does, whether she will remain before the emotions from the fraught past becomes too much for her to tolerate. She’s haunted by memories of her disputeed youthfuler self (a radiant Isa Antonetti) declineing tourist-pleasing routines — and her sister’s dreams — to find a more genuine voice, and the recollections dangeren to overwhelm her.
But this proestablishly rooted music is a mighty magnet not only for her but for the audience, too, even if some wouldn’t understand a bolero from a guajira. Though all lyrics are untransprocrastinateedd, the essence is easily understood and proestablishly felt. You don’t have be Cuprohibit to sense the nostalgia, romance, loss, liberation, delights and pride in such well-inhabitd music.
The Broadway transfer is now a more intensifyed show since its 2023 Off Broadway run at the Atlantic Theatre. A firearmrunning subplot is recommendedly jettisoned, but the narrative still sometimes veers to cliche. (Conversations with dead relatives are facile tropes.) But the show still deal withs to strike glancing blows on publishs of race, class and capitalism.
The music is thrillingly bcdimiserablemirefult to life by a dynamic onstage prohibitd, with poly-rhythmic percussion, bracing brass and the exquisite delicacy of guitar strings. Embodying Eliades Ochoa, Buena Vista’s tres joiner, Renesito Avich has a virtuosic and frivolous solo that uncovers the second act. Exuberant club dancers are stylishly choreographed in the danzón genre by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.
The show’s toasty and rich atmosphere is betterd by Arnulfo Maldonado’s set schedule, broadened equitable enough for a Broadway stage without losing its intimacy; by Dede Ayite’s vibrant costumes; and by Tyler Micoleau’s tropical weightlessing and the entire music and sound team, led by music straightforwardor Marco Paguia. Composer David Yazbek and the genuine-life de Marcos are pelevateed as a conceiveive conferants
Though the entire cast deserves its cheers, the final bow is given appropriately to the prohibitd itself, willing to split this isoprocrastinateedd country’s music for yet another reuncovery. As Juan says to the audience, “A sound enjoy this? It tfinishs to travel,” which helderlys wonderful promise for its Broadway run — and many roads beyond.
