• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
December 13, 2023 9:27 pm

Buena Vista Social Club: Go for the Music Alone

By Sandy MacDonald

★★★☆☆ The book could use a some beefing up, but the music is a treat – an extraordinary experience in so intimate a space.

Jared Machado (Young Compay) and the company. Photo: Ahron R. Foster

Inspired by a 1997 album recapturing the 1950s glory days of a long-shuttered Havana nightclub (Wim Wenders’s 1999 documentary chronicled the band’s phenomenal comeback), this sketchily scripted tribute opens with “El Carretero,” a protest song so energetically rendered, you may find yourself reacting with one breathless request: “¡Más!” No worries: You’ll be getting plenty more music but must wait out the production’s scripted portions (book by Marco Ramirez), which don’t begin to live up to the expertly rendered playlist.

As ringleader to a ten-member onstage band, Renesito Avich portrays famed tres guitarist Eliades Ochoa, a key player in the ’90s revival. Accompanying a drama which will ultimately underwhelm, the dexterous Avich has a bemused, self-effacing affect that’s irresistible. A few plangent stanzas in (“Yo trabajo sin reposo“), he’s got the audience in his thrall.

All too soon, however, the focus zooms in on a famed alumna, lead singer Omara Portuondo (Natalie Venetia Belcon).  It’s the ’90s: Omara continues to sing and record, but on condition of complete control. She has her accompanists lay down tracks, then – in isolation – she adds her vocal line.

[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]

Belcon is a fine, powerful singer, so it’s unfortunate that the script calls for us to imagine Omara in rigid, post-heyday mode. Just how accurate is that characterization? “Some of what follows is true,” warns Omara’s would-be documentarian Juan De Marcos (Luis Vega). “Some of it only feels true.”

What it feels is inchoate, and possibly off the mark. Do yourself a favor and catch the real Omara in the documentary: she’s charming, open, appealing. Belcon, however, is required to spend a good portion of act one playing an implacable monolith. It’s not until Omara is seduced by a flute solo, against her objection (“I don’t put flutes on my records”), that she finally defrosts. Who wouldn’t, with Hery Paz pulling off an extended solo that brings down the house?

Soon we’re transported via flashback to the fabled club (atmospheric design by Arnulfo Maldonado), or rather two clubs. In the fancy version (Tyler Micoleau’s lighting helps to demarcate the conversion), Young Omara – Kenya Browne, whose young voice has a promising burr –  co-stars with her older sister, Haydee (Danaya Esperanza), cranking out tourist-fare standards. Omara soon starts sneaking off to the Buena Vista for a taste of realness. Alienation ensues.

That interpersonal thread, plus Omara’s nascent awareness of racial discrimination, proves a slim thread to hang a plot on. (The documentarian/narrator does warn us from the outset that the show “is no way a historical account. It is not the story of a nation.”) The saving grace is that, in both nightspots (chichi and proletarian), co-choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck whip a sextet of lithe dancers (colorfully costumed by Dede Ayite) into a high-flying frenzy that threatens to test the bounds of the shallow Atlantic stage.

Does the show aim to go bigger – to Broadway, perhaps? It has the basic makings, but the script needs a livelier, clearer through line. It wouldn’t hurt to apply a stronger focus to the political turmoil of the times (both times, ‘50s and ‘90s), a topic only glancingly touched on here. Or maybe just accord the phenomenal cover band a series of concerts? History – and the audience – might be better served.

Buena Vista Social Club opened December 13, 2023 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through January 21, 2024. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org

About Sandy MacDonald

Sandy MacDonald started as an editor and translator (French, Spanish, Italian) at TDR: The Drama Review in 1969 and went on to help launch the journals Performance and Scripts for Joe Papp at the Public Theater. In 2003, she began covering New England theater for The Boston Globe and TheaterMania. In 2007, she returned to New York, where she has written for The New York Times, TDF Stages, Time Out New York, and other publications and has served four terms as a Drama Desk nominator. Her website is www.sandymacdonald.com.

Primary Sidebar

Creditors: Strindberg Updated, For Better and Worse

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith star in Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's classic drama.

Creditors: Love, Marriage, and Maddening Mind Games

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★☆☆ Ian Rickson directs the rarely performed Strindberg work, with a refresh from playwright Jen Silverman

Goddess: A Myth-Making, Magical New Musical

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ A luminous Amber Iman casts a spell in an ambitious Kenya-set show at the Public Theater

Lights Out, Nat King Cole: Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Dule Hill plays the title role in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor's play with music, exploring Nat King Cole's troubled psyche.

CRITICS' PICKS

Dead Outlaw: Rip-Roarin’ Musical Hits the Bull’s-Eye

★★★★★ David Yazbek’s brashly macabre tuner features Andrew Durand as a real-life desperado, wanted dead and alive

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.