Schoenfeld, Gerald, Theater

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares169 Views

    ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Brings the Thrill of Music Making to Broadway

    by

    A new musical inspired by the 1997 hit album gives a fictional back story to the veteran performers of the Havana music scene.The spirit of the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” is evident in its opening scene. Audience members have barely settled into their seats before a group of onstage musicians strikes up the number “El Carretero,” with the rest of the cast gathered around and watching. Some are leaning in from their chairs, others get up and dance on the side. The music is center stage, and we immediately understand its power as a communal experience that binds people.Therein lies the production’s greatest achievement. For a place where music so often plays a crucial role, Broadway hardly ever highlights the thrill of music making itself.Oh, there have been shows that have effectively pulled the curtain on the process — David Adjmi’s play “Stereophonic” takes place inside recording studios, and the most effective scenes in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” are set in one as well. But the interconnections between musicians, songs and a society have rarely been evoked as vividly, and as lovingly, as they are in “Buena Vista Social Club,” which opened on Wednesday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. (This improved version follows the show’s Off Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Company, which premiered in December 2023.)As its title indicates, this production, directed by Saheem Ali, is inspired by the 1997 hit album “Buena Vista Social Club,” on which veterans of the Havana scene performed beloved sons, danzones and boleros from the traditional Cuban repertoire. Many of those songs and others are in the musical (a booklet in the Playbill introduces each one, with illustrations by the flutist Hery Paz), along with most of those musicians and singers. Or at least versions of them are. Tellingly, the book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”) identifies the characters by their first names only, as if to underline that this is more of an evocative flight of fancy than a biomusical — Ramirez makes the most of musical theater’s notoriously loose relationship with facts.The action travels back and forth between 1956, in the tense time leading up to the toppling of the autocratic Batista regime, and 1996, when the young producer Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham) assembles a backing band for the older singers he’s brought into the studio. (The British executive producer Nick Gold and the American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder played important parts in the “Buena Vista Social Club” album and the Wim Wenders documentary that followed, but the musical doesn’t mention them. Instead it focuses on de Marcos’s role in putting together the band and singers.)The show toggles between 1996 and 1956, where the young performers Compay (Da’von T. Moody), Omara (Isa Antonetti) and Ibrahim (Wesley Wray) bond over their love of traditional Cuban music.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      A ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Musical Will Open on Broadway Next Year

      by

      The show, which had a previous run at Atlantic Theater Company, is scheduled to begin previews in February at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Twenty-seven years ago, “Buena Vista Social Club,” an album of prerevolutionary Cuban music that became an unexpected best seller, was released, spawning tours and documentary films and a burst of interest in the Afro-Cuban sound.Now a stage musical inspired by the making of the album is heading for Broadway.“Buena Vista Social Club” is scheduled to begin previews Feb. 21 and to open March 19 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.Set primarily in Havana, the show depicts a group of aging and often overlooked musicians gathering in a recording studio, and recalling the tumultuous era decades earlier when they were young and the Cuban Revolution was gaining steam. The narrative loosely tracks with the history of the album, but contains songs that were released separately and elements that are fictionalized.The show had an Off Broadway run, at Atlantic Theater Company, that opened in late 2023; Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, described it as “full-of-riches,” praising the song and dance elements but expressing concerns about some of the storytelling. The Broadway cast will include many of the same performers and musicians as the Off Broadway production.The songs are all attributed to the Buena Vista Social Club, and the show has a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”). The director is Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) and the choreographers are the married couple Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.The musical is being capitalized for $17 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The lead producers are Orin Wolf, John Styles and Barbara Broccoli, who previously worked together on “The Band’s Visit.” Among the co-producers are the comedian-actor John Leguizamo; Luis Miranda, a founder of the Hispanic Federation and the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda; and LaChanze, the Tony-winning actress. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      ‘The Notebook’ Review: A Musical Tear-Jerker or Just All Wet?

      by

      The 2004 weepie comes to Broadway with songs by Ingrid Michaelson and a $5 box of tissues.Romantic musicals are as personal as romance itself. What makes you sigh and weep may leave the person next to you bored and stony.At “The Notebook,” I was the person next to you.You were sniffling even before anything much happened onstage. As the lights came up, an old man dozed while a teenage boy and girl frisked nearby in an unconvincing body of water. A wispy song called “Time” wafted over the footlights: “Time time time time/It was never mine mine mine.”But having seen (I’m guessing more than once) the 2004 movie on which “The Notebook” is based, and possibly having read the 1996 novel by Nicholas Sparks, you perfectly well knew what was coming. That was the point of mounting the show, which opened on Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, in the first place.It therefore cannot be a spoiler — and anyway this block of cheese is impervious — to reveal that over the course of the 54 years covered by the musical, the frisky boy, Noah, turns into the dozing man. And that Allie, the frisky girl, having overcome various impediments to their love, winds up his wife. Nor does it give anything away to add that Allie, now 70 and in a nursing home with dementia, will not remember Noah until he recites their story from a notebook she prepared long ago for that purpose.So there’s a reason the producers are selling teeny $5 “Notebook”-themed boxes of tissues in the lobby. Love is powerful. Dementia is sad. The result can be heartbreaking.Or maybe, seen with a cold eye, meretricious.The movie, a super-slick Hollywood affair, did everything it could to keep the eye warm. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, as the young couple, could not have been glowier. The soundtrack relied on precision-crafted standards like “I’ll Be Seeing You” to yank at your tear ducts. The production design, like a montage of greeting cards come to life, celebrated valentine passion, anniversary tenderness and golden sympathy, releasing flocks of trained geese into a technicolor sunset to symbolize lifelong pair bonding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More