Musical theater lovers can’t get enough of Lin-Manuel Miranda these days. Tickets to his show Hamilton are impossible to get in New York and have sold like hotcakes in Chicago.
Now, Akron-area audiences can see the musical that first put Miranda on the Broadway map — In the Heights, playing for five shows Wednesday through Saturday at Firestone High School. This marks the first time the 2008 Broadway musical, winner of four Tony Awards and a Grammy, has been produced in Akron.
The show tells the story of Usnavi (Firestone student Memo Diaz-Capt), a Dominican-American who immigrated with his parents to New York when he was very young. His parents have died and he has inherited their tiny bodega in the struggling Washington Heights neighborhood, where he has grown up in a close-knit community.
The tale about community and family also follows college girl Nina (Kate Klika), who made it out of the barrio to attend college, and the non-Hispanic boy, Benny, whom she falls in love with. Other characters include salon owner Daniela (Alana Murray), Usnavi’s love interest Vanessa (Reyna Moran), and neighborhood matriarch Abuela Claudia (Gracie Thanasiu).
In this musical, steeped in rap, hip hop, salsa dance and music, many of these characters dream of getting out of their neighborhood. As Usnavi sets the scene for the opening number, In the Heights, he raps “’Cuz my parents came with nothing, they got a little more. And sure we’re poor, but yo, at least we got the store. It’s all about the legacy they left with me …”
Coming to Firestone
Director Mark Zimmerman said he’s been wondering since watching the 2008 Tony Awards when his school could do the show, which originally starred Miranda as Usnavi.
“It was really exciting because it looked so new and fresh, unlike anything I had seen,’’ Zimmerman said of the show’s televised excerpts. “It’s been 10 years since the show came out [Off-Broadway] and it’s still really fresh.”
He listened to the cast album over and over, drawn to its Latin rhythms.
“There’s a really good show there that tells a story — a universal story’’ about home, family and finding where you belong, he said. “Is home the place we live, or is home the people we live with?”
“It’s got some characters that the actors can really bite into and chew on for a long time,” Zimmerman said of the ensemble show.
The story is very personal to Miranda, who is of mainly Puerto Rican descent and grew up in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Looming in the background of the musical’s set is the George Washington Bridge.
Show structure
Firestone’s show is choreographed by alumna Tara Tober. She has talked to the high school dancers about choreography in terms of the dramatic structure of each scene, Zimmerman said.
“How do you relate to your environment and the other people who are in your environment?” is her question, the director said.
The cast has been working on overdrive with dance, especially learning the physical vocabulary of salsa, the director said. At rehearsal Wednesday, they were fine-tuning The Club, a dance scene that leads into a climactic Act I ending. She encouraged the ensemble to explore different arm positions in their salsa dancing, which would bring the movement from Salsa 101 to a more professional look.
In the extended opening number In the Heights, she told the performers to improvise with dance while moving as part of the neighborhood’s street traffic. The goal was to not see a shift between the acting and dancing.
“It should just be seamless,’’ Tober said.
Rapping is new to junior Diaz-Capt, who narrates the story as Usnavi.
“I’m not aware that he has any experience with that but he has taken to it like a duck to water,’’ Zimmerman said. “Memo is a really great performer with really strong acting instincts.”
The show is innovative with its rap and hip-hop but at its heart, it’s a traditional musical with a number of beautiful ballads, the director stresses. The lessons Miranda learned as a composer and dramatist in In the Heights are a big part of what led to his cultural phenomenon Hamilton, also steeped in rap and hip-hop.
As Zimmerman said, “His voice is so pervasive. His voice as a writer and a rapper and an artist is so unique.”
Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her at @KerryClawsonABJ or www.facebook.com/kclawsonabj.