Last year, Justin Peck won the Tony Award for Best Choreography for “Illinoise.” There’s certainly more choreography in that Sufjan Stevens musical than “Buena Vista Social Club,” which opened the year before in December 2023 at the Atlantic Theater Company. But step for step, lift for lift, Peck’s work with Patricia Delgado for this slightly earlier show is the far more impressive achievement. “Buena Vista Social Club” opened Wednesday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, where the splendid choreography continues to erupt in a chemical reaction where ballet, Afro-Cuban, contemporary and a variety of social dances both blend and slam into each other.
Although other cast members occasionally join in to salsa, Delgado and Peck basically work their magic with only six dancers who are so good they need to be credited at the top of this review: Angelica Beliard, Carlos Falu, Hector Juan Maisonet, Ilda Mason, Marielys Molina and Anthony Santos.
But “Buena Vista Social Club” is not a dance show, nor is it a jukebox musical — even though about half of the musical’s 18 songs come from the historic 1996 album of the same title. (The other songs are from the Buena Vista Social Club ensemble’s extended songbook.) Marco Ramirez’s multilayered book for “Buena Vista” tells the story of the making of the album in Havana, Cuba, which was a reunion of sorts for a number of singers and musicians who first performed together four decades earlier, in 1956.
Delgado and Peck’s choreography often helps to bridge those two radically different time periods of 1996, when an impoverished Cuba continued to suffer from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. blockade, and 1956, when a far more prosperous country was on the verge of revolution. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are never mentioned, but both the threat and the promise of a new way of life permeate Ramirez’s book.
Most in danger of being lost are the social clubs that produced the music that ended up on the 1996 album, the dream project of an enterprising young producer, Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham, being very dogged and optimistic in his mission). Not featured in Ramirez’s loosely-based-on-the-facts story is the album’s official producer, American guitarist Ry Cooder.
In the typical jukebox musical, preexisting songs are jammed into a plot. That’s not the case here. The songs don’t further or in any way explain the story. They set a mood, they capture emotions and they are performed as those songs would have been originally delivered in Havana’s social clubs, hotel ballrooms and recording studios.
For this gringo reviewer, Ramirez’s story has shades of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “A Star Is Born” without the easy contrivance of a murder or a suicide to goose up the narrative, but with a big dollop of “Dreamgirls” thrown into the mix.
In 1956, the young singer Omara (Isa Antonetti) performs with her sister Haydee (Ashley de la Rosa) in Havana’s tourist hotels. Of course, Omara’s real passion is singing with her new boyfriend, Ibrahim (Wesley Wray), in the city’s social clubs, which are anathema to her far more ambitious sister. As fate would have it, the record producers from America and Cuba have no interest in Ibrahim, drawn as they are racially to the more conventionally glamorous Omara. Haydee eventually escapes to America. Ibrahim is forgotten and recedes into the Cuban countryside.
Ramirez tells that story from the viewpoint of 1996 when the older Omara (Natalie Venetia Belcon) is engaged to make the “Buena Vista Social Club” album and she is treated to a reunion with the older Ibrahim (Mel Seme), now singing for small change on the streets of Havana. “Buena Vista Social Club” is the story of survival through the preservation of what artists do best, not only for them but a whole island and its culture.
With her absolute command of the stage, Belcon galvanizes and grounds the production in a performance that fulfills all the demands of August Wilson’s greatest female role, Ma Rainey. Belcon instills that same fear and awe without ever pushing it. This actor’s achievement is even more remarkable in light of her having created the role of Gary Coleman in the original production of “Avenue Q” over 20 years ago. The two roles belong in different theatrical universes — and yet, Belcon has made both of them very much her own.
Belcon and Seme repeat their performances from the Atlantic Theater production. Many of the younger actors have been recast, and while their vocals dazzle, their acting occasionally falters, especially when they are called upon to deliver a lot of exposition about the early days of the Cuban revolution.
There’s no telling where Delgado and Peck’s choreography ends and Saheem Ali’s direction picks up, which is as it should be. When the dancers aren’t being amazing, there is Ali’s seamless use of Arnulfo Maldonado’s multi-level set to guide us between two radically different periods in Cuban history.
“Buena Vista” is not quite the show it was Off Broadway. A highlight for me downtown was the end of Act 1 where Ali’s direction handled not one but four stories that exploded into a singular, spectacular climax. Alas, the story about the running of illegal guns through the social club has been dropped. A great show has been made only somewhat less wonderful.
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