Whitewash ‘In the Heights’? Chicago, You Can Do Better

AMERICAN THEATRE: Last week, Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre released the cast list for its upcoming production of In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s musical set in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City. Almost immediately, a number of people noticed that while a majority of the cast featured Latinos, the show’s lead and narrator, Usnavi—an immigrant from the Dominican Republic played by Miranda in the original Off-Broadway and Broadway productions—will be played by a white actor, Jack DeCesare. The creative team is also predominantly non-Hispanic white.