OH, for the Jets and Sharks of yesterday – the Annie in “Annie Get Your Gun,” or even the Annie of “Annie.”
Oh, for a few people being real, nasty and maybe both, and being able to sing about it.
They’re nowhere to be found in “In the Heights,” the salsa-impregnated musical that opened last night after a successful off-Broadway run.
Broadway’s search for the new, gritty musical – the next “West Side Story,” “Hair” or “Rent” – continues, trying to discover something that talks today’s talk, sings today’s songs.
Unfortunately, “In the Heights” doesn’t stray more than a brief subway ride from middle-age Broadway’s comfort zone.
It’s certainly no rude “Spring Awakening.” It’s more like “Guys and Dolls” seen through rose-colored Latino spectacles, with a little gambling (strictly legal), scarce sex (all of it straight) and no drugs. No cigarettes, either, come to think of it.
Instead, it’s a pretty picture postcard of Washington Heights – one
with few lows.
The show has been created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a young Ivy League-educated graduate from the ‘hood.
Not only did he provide the concept, but he’s also composed the brilliantly lively music and the even more dazzling lyrics. (He even quotes Cole Porter.)
He also plays one of the leads, and he’s fantastic – a natural who has carved himself a terrific leading role.
So the music is fun, the lyrics are clever, and Miranda is the finest performer of that name since Carmen. And while no one else in the cast is at his level, or has his chances, most are pretty damn good.
Anna Louizos’ set – a pretty barrio square in that uptown neighborhood – seems absolutely right for the show, filled as it is with architectural power and grandeur, complete with a wonderfully realistic George Washington Bridge in the background.
Paul Tazewell’s costumes are imaginative without being implausible. The partly hip-hop choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler is slick and slickly performed. And while the lighting by Howell Binkley is bizarre in its almost abstract changes, these were presumably at the request of Miranda or his otherwise sharp director, Thomas Kail.
So with everything so right, what went wrong? What usually goes wrong on musicals: the book. Quiara Alegria Hudes’ work is droopily sentimental and untruthful: Young love finds true love, old love reinforces fading love, the foreseeable right person wins the lottery and, just as foreseeable, the right person keels over dead exactly on cue.
There is no real plot, no true drama. Everyone is as cute as a litter of kittens.
Without any lows, just how high can these sanitized “Heights” climb?
IN THE HEIGHTS
Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St.; (212) 221-1211.