In the Heights at Asheville Community Theatre
A fireworks display of song and dance is bursting on stage at Asheville Community Theatre with In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 Tony-winning, pre-Hamilton Broadway breakthrough.
Miranda’s joyous musical telenovela is a love letter to all things Latino, set on one block of the Upper Manhattan barrio of Washington Heights. It plays out over a sweltering July 4th weekend in the street and in the shops with apartments above them, and on the fire escapes and apartment stoops. A tight group of vecinos (neighbors) are in and out of each other’s lives as they strive to make a living and chase their dreams of love and moving up.
The show’s narrator is Usnavi de la Vega, the proprietor of the corner bodega and the neighborhood's chief storyteller. He dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, his parents’ homeland, with his chica, Vanessa. As embodied with loose-limbed charm and a winning smile by Hector Molina, he is the dynamo at the center of the action.
Vanessa, played by the vivacious Kavi Zuniga, is following her own sueñito: becoming a fashion designer and paying for an apartment in Manhattan’s downtown Fashion District. Zuniga’s vocal firepower kept the June 12 opening night audience cheering each of her high notes.
Counterpointing Usnavi’s shy pursuit of Vanessa is the conflicted romance of Nina Rosario — the barrio’s star student — and Benny, the dispatcher in her father’s taxi company. Nina has gone off to Stanford University bearing the burden of her father’s hopes that she will achieve great things. Benny, meanwhile, appears stuck at home, knowing her father thinks he’s not a suitable suitor.
With subtlety and nuance, Fernanda Guerrero portrays Nina’s struggle to stay loyal to Benny without disappointing her father. River Spade captures Benny’s wistful longing for Nina and his awareness that he may not be Nina’s equal.
Leonardo Zighelboim and Daniela Risquez play Kevin and Camila Rosario, Nina’s parents, who have sacrificed nearly everything to give their daughter opportunities they never had.
Both have a moment to shine musically. In "Inútil (Useless),” Zighelboim delivers a poignant, dramatic monologue edged with bitterness as he reveals the insecurities that have shaped his dreams for his daughter. Risquez’s answering aria, "Enough," is a powerful declaration that she will have a strong voice in her daughter’s battle for independence.
Watching over them all is Abuela Claudia, the neighborhood’s honorary grandmother. Her wisdom and generosity make her the heart of the comunidad. Sarah Núñez positively exudes Claudia’s warm spirit, along with a touch of impishness. When she slyly reveals a secret, the opening night audience whooped with laughter.
And she brought down the house with a powerful rendition of “Paciencia y Fe (Patience and Faith),” recalling the hardships of her journey from Cuba to America. Choreographers Sara Duarte, Kenna Sommer, and Anastasia Seltzer surround her with ghostly Cuban dancers for one of the show’s many vivid stage pictures.
Abuela Claudia is also the focus of the evening's most moving moment. When the company gathers late in the second act to sing "Alabanza," the number is performed with such feeling that the usually exuberant audience sat in complete silence for seconds before breaking into applause.
Miranda gives all of his principals a featured number. Some are in his signature, spiraling rap style, packed with ingenious internal rhymes. Others are anthems or ballads pulsing with salsa, merengue, and other Latin beats. Still others are recitative-like soliloquies in which characters bare their souls.
In the Heights certainly has an operatic vibe. It shifts continually between aria, recitative, dramatic interludes, and big choral passages. And its panoply of characters swells with outsized emotion. Like its telenovela cousin, it's a tangy cazuela of humor, melodrama, and uplift.
Under the nimble direction of Hendersonville-based Tola Sun, making her ACT debut, In the Heights brings everything together into a lustrous whole. Sun draws uniformly confident performances from all of her large cast of principals. Without exception, these actors convince us they are living in the moment in this place and time.
Sun keeps everything flowing with nonstop high energy. Even the quiet moments feel energetic. Choreographers Duarte, Sommer, and Seltzer and music directors Kristen Dominguez and Luis E. Ramirez propel a large ensemble of 19 in simple but ever-changing patterns and harmonies to ever-changing Latin American rhythms. These singers and dancers have precision and spirit.
The production team, led by longtime ACT Director of Production Jill Summers, provides an atmospheric look and sound for this barrio block — not easy within the confines of ACT’s narrow stage. (However, a view of the George Washington Bridge could have enhanced our sense of place.)
Lighting designers Abby Auman and Amaru Gutierrez take us from dawn to dusk several times, and through a heat-wave-induced blackout. (This reviewer wished for more spectacle from their July 4th fireworks.)
Costume designers Fable Wilde Day and Perla Eckley fill the stage with a glorious motley of colors, patterns, and textures that embody the Latino spirit. You should definitely heed Sun’s advice in her director’s note to “keep an eye on our cast’s costumes” during Act II. You’ll find out why during the rousing company song “Carnival.”
In fact, take this reviewer’s advice and read Sun’s entire director’s note — it’s in the back of the program, so you might skip over it. It’s a heartfelt personal story and an insightful backstory of ACT’s production of In the Heights and how it came to have its impact.
In the Heights runs through June 28 at Asheville Community Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit ashevilletheatre.org.
(Photo courtesy of Asheville Community Theatre)
