Entering “Buena Vista Social Club” is like stepping into a heady world of the senses, of heightened emotions, and of passionate music and dance.
The Social Club was a real place for locals in Havana in the ’50s. Decades later, its music became the source of a Grammy-winning album, then a popular film — and now it’s the most intoxicating and rapturous show of the Broadway season.
The celebratory musical — with a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”), developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) — takes its inspiration from Wim Wenders’ 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary on the making of the album “Buena Vista Social Club.”
“Some of what follows is true,” says Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham), the show’s young record producer and musicology student who is making an album of “songs from the old days,” using veteran Cuban musicians whom time had almost forgotten. “And some of it only feels true.”
Feeling is everything in Ramirez’s book, in Ali’s staging and for the astonishing ensemble cast, as the story shuttles between an Old Havana recording studio in the ’90s and the city a week before the 1959 revolutionary takeover. The framing device has the principal characters represented by their younger selves with the two eras intertwined in a sort of kinder, gentler, Latin “Follies.”
Among them is the club’s busboy singer Ibrahim (Mel Seme as the elder, Wesley Wray as his younger self); guitarist-singer Compay (Julio Monge and Da’von T. Moody); and pianist Ruben (Jainardo Batista Sterling and Leonardo Reyna).
But key to the project is wooing legendary singer Omara (Natalie Vetetia Belson, terrific), a regal and imposing figure who has no interest in looking back. For decades, she has been a successful solo act in Cuba but hasn’t performed in years since the death of her sister and singing partner Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa), who fled to the U.S. to pursue a recording career when Castro took power.
But de Marcos is persistent as well as clever in his charm offensive. “I just dreamed that one day, with the right record, this island might remind the world that Mozart’s got nothing on us,” he proclaims.
Ramirez creates dramatic tension around whether the Cuban diva — modeled on “the queen of feeling” Omara Portuondo, who is showcased in Wenders’ film — will join in the recording session, and, if she does, whether she will remain before the emotions from the fraught past becomes too much for her to bear. She’s haunted by memories of her conflicted younger self (a radiant Isa Antonetti) rejecting tourist-pleasing routines — and her sister’s dreams — to find a more authentic voice, and the recollections threaten to overwhelm her.
But this deeply rooted music is a powerful magnet not only for her but for the audience, too, even if some wouldn’t know a bolero from a guajira. Though all lyrics are untranslated, the essence is easily understood and deeply felt. You don’t have be Cuban to feel the nostalgia, romance, loss, liberation, joys and pride in such well-lived music.
The Broadway transfer is now a more focused show since its 2023 Off Broadway run at the Atlantic Theatre. A gunrunning subplot is wisely jettisoned, but the narrative still sometimes veers to cliche. (Conversations with dead relatives are facile tropes.) But the show still manages to strike glancing blows on issues of race, class and capitalism.
The music is thrillingly brought to life by a dynamic onstage band, with poly-rhythmic percussion, bracing brass and the exquisite delicacy of guitar strings. Embodying Eliades Ochoa, Buena Vista’s tres player, Renesito Avich has a virtuosic and playful solo that opens the second act. Exuberant club dancers are stylishly choreographed in the danzón genre by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.
The show’s warm and rich atmosphere is enhanced by Arnulfo Maldonado’s set design, expanded just enough for a Broadway stage without losing its intimacy; by Dede Ayite’s vibrant costumes; and by Tyler Micoleau’s tropical lighting and the entire music and sound team, led by music director Marco Paguia. Composer David Yazbek and the real-life de Marcos are credited as a creative consultants
Though the entire cast deserves its cheers, the final bow is given appropriately to the band itself, eager to share this isolated country’s music for yet another rediscovery. As Juan says to the audience, “A sound like this? It tends to travel,” which holds great promise for its Broadway run — and many roads beyond.
