Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "'In the Heights' is a contemporary musical that marches to a different beat.
Set in Manhattan's Washington Heights, a neighborhood so far uptown that traveling to Harlem means going downtown, 'In the Heights' creates its music from the urban cadences and rhymes of rap, and the salsa and merengue beats of Latin music."
2 comments:
I'm seeing this show tonight, and am now a bit apprehensive about it. Reading this article, it seems as though this show is just a stereotypical musical about achieving your dreams, beating the system, and becoming ones "true self". Although this is all wonderful to see, we've also seen it many times. I realize that commercial theater is in great part about making money, but isn't there a way to do something new while keeping audiences interested? I was surprised to read what the critic had to say about the cast. Among other critiques, he said the CMU grad and lead to the show is "earnest and appealing but bland". Seems a bit contradictory. Either way, it will be good to see the show, one can always learn from something, even if it isn't a good show.
Sylvianne, I would love to hear your thoughts on Kyle Beltran's performance, because I felt like the Trib pretty much hit his performance on the head. I saw In the Heights when I was back in Chicago over Winter Break, and I was rather underwhelmed. The music is very engaging and the intelligent-light-explosion captivate with spectacle, but the story was rather weak to me. Pride in your heritage is one thing, but playing into stereotype is a vastly different one, one which ItH embraces whole-heartedly, especially in bland and culturally awkward numbers like "Carnaval del Barrio", which features all the actors dancing around to a salsa beat with Dominican Republic flags et al.
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