The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Atlantic Theater’s Buena Vista Social Club

By Ross

It’s a grand fantastic musical party from the first strum on that guitar. And it’s one you should do everything in your power to get to, as Atlantic Theater‘s Buena Vista Social Club is an exceptional musical experience, overflowing with emotional and musical expertise shining down on us all as gorgeously as the sunset off the coast of Cuba. The music is completely unstoppable; rich, invigorating, and profoundly performed by a stellar band, led by music supervisor Dean Sharenow (Broadway’s Girl From the North Country) and music director/conductor (on the piano) Marco Paguia (Broadway’s Gutenberg! The Musical), that keeps giving and giving with a love and rhythm that is impossible to not devour.

Directed with a keen ear to its musicality by Saheem Ali (Broadway’s Fat Ham), Buena Vista Social Club is essentially a jukebox musical, done at a whole different level and dimension, taking inspiration from the musicians and stars of the Grammy Award-winning band of the same name, credited with the music that never gives up. David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit) is also credited as Creative Consultant. The show shines as bright as the creative team behind it, placing the iconic performance space solidly and organically inside Atlantic Theater Company‘s home on W. 20th St, thanks to the spectacular work by set designer Arnulfo Maldonado (Broadway’s A Strange Loop), costume designer Dede Ayite (Public’s Hell’s Kitchen), lighting designer Tyler Micoleau (Broadway’s Into the Woods), and sound designer Jonathan Deans (Broadway’s Ain’t No Mo’ ), expanding the stage with a soul and spirit that undeniable.

The colorful piece radiates an energy that floats in smoothly and excitedly on the notes that radiate out from all those well-played instruments, filling the theatre with a variety of sounds and songs that completely register. It’s as infectious as can be, creating an energy that moves through you, from your nodding head to your tapping toes. The scenes of interaction are transported out to us in English, unpacking the emotional entanglements that surrounded the making of Wim Wenders’ 1999 documentary over a landscape of four decades in about two hours of fictionalized backstory. It’s solid stuff, this unpacking, focusing on a crew of characters; musicians and singers, that are trying hard to create a cultural, music legacy while also attempting to survive a country working hard against them. The struggle is real and impossible to fully comprehend, but their passion for the music and their ownership of their sound rings true tonally and emotionally, especially when the music starts to play.

First, we are introduced to the hardened but respected older singer, Omara, played with a strong sense of self by Natalie Venetia Belcon (Broadway’s Avenue Q), a profoundly gifted singer who is being lured, with surprising success, by a young upstart music producer Juan De Marcos (Luis Vega) determined to rediscover the traditional Cuban sound for consumption outside of Cuba. It’s a carefully crafted moment, their tango, that sends us flying back to a moment when Omara was young, sweet, and innocent, portrayed gently by the very engaging Kenya Browne, and performing nightly as one half of a sister act. Her sister, Haydee, played powerfully by Danaya Esperanza (Public’s for colored girls…), is focused; guiding the duo with careful deliberation, creating success by singing in traditional tourist destinations where they, while performing Cuban classics, are deemed prettier when they smile. Capital Records might be interested, she reminds the young Omara.

But within seconds of a quick pre-show rehearsal with some new fill-in musicians; the young Compay, handsomely portrayed by the exceptional Jared Machado (Chance Theater’s Ride the Cyclone) on guitar, and the young Rubén, portrayed strongly by Leonardo Reyna (“El Gran Impaciente“) on piano, a spark is lit inside the younger sister. One based on the music of her island. Not on placating foreign tourists at fancy island resorts. At first, it feels like it might be coming out because of love, as Compay first exclaims when seeing the very pretty Omara walk in, but, as the energy pulls Omara to the wrong side of town and into the warmth and energy of the Buena Vista Social Club where she meets the charismatic and gifted young singer, Ibrahim, beautifully portrayed by Olly Sholotan (Peacock’s “Bel Air“), something far more organic and far more powerful comes to life. And there is no turning back for the singer. Even as politics, colorism, and class differences come clamoring into their musical heaven, beginning with the Cuban revolution of the 1950s.

With a light, and sometimes all-too-bare book by Marco Ramirez (LCT’s The Royale), this rendering parallels the older and harder present with the more optimistic and idealized past, for most of those who played a role in this narrative. It’s a standardized delivery, one that is being played out to a less successful degree in both Broadway’s Harmony and Lincoln Center Theater’s The Gardens of Anuncia, where the old version introduces us to their younger self. But here, in this exceptionally emotional entanglement, the heart pumps strong with a musical rhythm that can’t be ignored. The older Omara is solidly in charge of her sound and career, although closed off, keeping her distance from the band, recording privately, on her own, in the studio. “Less band, more me,” she states to her offstage unseen engineer as she closes herself off more and more with each note sung, but somewhere in the historical air that this passionate music producer blows in from the sea, a window of regret, love, connection, and loss is opened inside Omara’s protective soul. Her sister reenters her heart, flooding herself with the memories of a time she has tried to lock out. It overwhelms and drives her, with equal force. But the music and the history that live inside these singers and musicians are too strong to not be played and sung, and Omara gives in, singing live with all these fabulous musicians, diving back into the painful memories of love, separation, and estrangements. Even when the pain is almost too much.

The music and the song list are powerful and exceptionally well performed. The young producer who is determined to record this band and this sound for mass consumption far beyond the shores of Cuba, brings forth the older Compay, dynamically embodied by Julio Monge (Broadway’s On Your Feet!), to help secure the reluctant and strongly opinioned (and flute-opposed) Omara. It’s an electric reunion, stitched with intimacy and connection. Compay, who engages with Omara on a whole other spiritual and historical level, is filled with light and love (and a bit of booze and sexual energy). He brings forth memories and remembrances with a sly wink, systematically tracking down a worn down Ibrahim, played tenderly by Mel Semé, and an almost silent Rubén, played compassionately by Jainardo Batista Sterling, filling out the look-back framework as gently as Ibrahim’s beautiful singing for pesos on a sunset boardwalk.

The historic energy invades the space, packing in layers upon layers of political history and personal dynamics with heart and expert clarity. It all feels engaging and encompassing, telling tales and unpacking emotional history to the same beat that swings the hips of that talented ensemble, choreographed spectacularly by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck (Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story“). They move and embellish every moment, and when that band floats forward, delivering that mesmerizing music and energy into our laps, we can not resist. Especially when we are truly gifted with the captivating guitar playing of Renesita Avich, which is pure emotion and fire, all rolled up into a sound that will not soon leave you. I hope ATC‘s Buena Vista Social Club has a longer life than what has been scheduled at the Linda Gross Theater, because, even though I never saw the documentary film nor did I buy the CD, the music and this show should not be missed. It needs to be gulped down like a good strong rum and coke on a hot Cuban night, gazing out on the sunset and dreaming of the past when all seemed important and powerfully present.