At New York City Center’s gala presentation of “In the Heights,” my ear kept tickling me. Was I experiencing the aural equivalent of déjà vu? Every revival has this quality, of course, the slippery interface between memory and now.
But Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s 2005 musical operates in the mind in strange ways, even if we didn’t see it on Broadway in 2008, or catch the 2021 movie. We can certainly hear that it’s Miranda’s early opus: His later “Hamilton” sits directly on top of its prosodic structures. But also, at its best, “In the Heights” sounds as if it’s been around forever.
That’s because Miranda’s score contains the sounds of New York — quotations from the merengué bop “El Tiburón,” snatches of salsa standards, the tinkle of the Mister Softee ice cream truck. At City Center, it sometimes felt as if we were driving the whole theater through an uptown stretch of Broadway, changing stations on the radio, rolling the windows down.
A sweet breeze does move through the director David Mendizábal’s frequently ecstatic concert revival, led by Matte Martinez as Usnavi, the bodega-owner protagonist originally played by Miranda himself. Usnavi needs to be charming enough to anchor the show, yet goofy enough to seem like a hapless stumblebum around the bombshell Vanessa (Ashley De La Rosa). Martinez embodies this tension: He scampers and boxer-shuffles, making quick footwork reflect his skittering heart.
We meet the adorably awkward Usnavi on a punishing July morning. It’s sweltering, his cousin Sonny (the show-stealer Ishmael Gonzalez) is unreliable, and the refrigerator’s broken. Usnavi, literally, has no chill. What he does have is a loyal customer base in his mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhood, starting with everyone’s honorary abuela Claudia (Natalie Venetia Belcon, moonlighting from her Tony Award-winning role in “Buena Vista Social Club”). There’s also the gossipy salon-owner Daniela (Linedy Genao); the car-service driver Benny (Aaron James McKenzie); and the academic star Nina (Jaci Calderon), just home from Stanford.
Nina’s parents are about to learn that she’s taken a leave, unable to keep up with the financial and educational pressures, but on this steamy July morning, her eyes turn to Benny and something else kindles. Gonzalez’s Sonny also senses that romance is building like pressure in a fire hydrant, so he bum-rushes Usnavi into asking Vanessa out. (Sonny then does a great little “I’m over here sweeping” sashay stage left, which is better than a cold Coke in summer.)
The bones of Hudes’s script are melodramatic: two couples, a lottery, a windfall, a death. If these elements are not arranged as life might arrange them, if the dialogue sometimes telegraphs the action, then the soaring music suggests that we not worry about it. You believe every ballad someone sings you? Please.
Mendizábal places the orchestra onstage; it sits high up on the George Washington Bridge itself, thanks to the scenic designer Riw Rakkulchon, who exploits City Center’s immense vertical height. Most of the city dwellers dance and work and bicker below, against a row of spray-painted shop shutters, but the orchestra’s up where the air is clearer. The musicians have a (hypothetical) view of the Hudson, and the lighting designer Justin Townsend gives them a lovely sunset.
Technically, this is a concert staging, and the program notes that the cast might have scripts with them. That “unfinished” attitude is absolutely not in evidence; everything about the explosive dancing (choreographed by the superb Mayte Natalio) and the ravishingly sung performances seems as polished as can be. Calderon writes in her bio that she dedicates her performance to her 15-year-old self, who “belted the ‘In the Heights’ soundtrack everywhere she could.” You sense that lifelong practice here — this cast has loved these songs for a long time.
I do regret, though, that this isn’t more of a workshop. Miranda’s bilingual lyrics are a wonder, so crackling, dense and clever they sometimes make you laugh in sheer disbelief. Benny gets on the car-service dispatch microphone, for instance, and starts barking directions in a patter that can feel like an A train going express. One line sets up a rhythmic melee between “Jacob Javits Convention Center” and “rubber-neckin’ on 192nd” that I’m still giggling about. But the story itself doesn’t have that same velocity and muscle.
So much is wonderful here that it takes a while for the first offramp speed to slow, but the narrative traffic does get heavy. The business around the lottery (who wins, who loses, who tells its story) becomes laborious. We find ourselves caring more and more about the dazzling group numbers, as we find ourselves caring less about the dramaturgy. But who’s to say that Hudes’s book is set in unchangeable stone? City Center productions have a way of changing lanes and finding their way over to Broadway again. On a hot day in Washington Heights, even asphalt melts. It makes it easier to lay a new road.
In the Heights Through Nov. 15 at New York City Center, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
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