Photos courtesy of Broadway in Chicago. Top: (from left) Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, Isabel Santiago, Arielle Jacobs and Genny Lis Padilla. Middle: Kyle Beltran. Bottom: Gonzalez-Nacer.
It’s not sporting to compare shows, but we’re gonna do so regardless. Which is to say: There’s more heart, soul and spirit in the first five minutes of In the Heights than there is in the entire two-and-a-half hours of The Addams Family. So if you’re debating over which Broadway in Chicago musical to splurge on over the holidays (and with good seats going at $90, BiC is always a splurge), head for the show set in northern as opposed to Central Park, Manhattan.
The 2008 four-time Tony winner (Best Musical, music and lyrics, choreography and orchestrations) is hot both in its sweltering July setting and in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s sizzling score and Andy Blankenbuehler’s equally blazing and beautiful choreography. Salsa fuses with rap fuses with hip-hop and meringue and pop on a gritty, marvelously authentic streetscape (set designer Anna Louizos row of tenacious, run-down storefronts looks like it was plucked wholesale from the real Washington Heights and dropped onto the stage at the Cadillac Palace Theatre). The generations of Latina/o immigrants who live on this tough, enduring block are people you know: Down-to-earth, committed to family, and fighting to forge a better future from a difficult present. 
It hardly matters that Quiara Alegria Hudes’ book (conceived by Miranda) is something of a sentimental soap opera. The particulars: Usnavi (Kyle Beltran) is the son of Dominican American immigrants and the owner of the local bodega. He yearns for the leggy, lovely Vanessa (Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer), a young woman who in turn dreams of getting out of the barrio and finding an apartment downtown. Nina (Arielle Jacobs) is the local girl made good, home from her first year Stanford in crisis – she’s lost her scholarship because the two jobs she held down to meet expenses made it impossible for her to maintain her GPA. Nina’s father Kevin (Daniel Bolero), meanwhile, loves his daughter deeply but reveals an ugly, racist side when she falls in love with Kevin (Rogelio Douglas Jr.), an African-American who has worked for Kevin’s limo service almost since childhood. Adding invaluable levity and proud, irresistible sex appeal to the community is Daniela (Isabel Santiago), the vivacious and curvaceous owner of the local unisex salon where Vanessa works. She’s been priced out by rising rent and is moving her shop to the Bronx, an occurrence that underscores the threatening gentrification of the neighborhood.
Overseeing the whole community is matriarch Abuela Claudia (Elise Santora), the wise elder who raised Usnavi after his parents died (and whose memories of coming to Nuevo York in 1943 provide one of the production’s most haunting dance sequences). A $96,000 lotto ticket, a power outage and 4th of July festivities provide an umbrella for all the various plot threads which – no spoiler this being a musical - are all neatly and happily tied up by the finale.
Soapish or not, In the Heights succeeds where daytime dramas fail. That’s because at the core of each individual dilemma is an authentic, emotionally honest vision of the American Dream, that universal drive to succeed and make life better for the next generation that has empowered all races of immigrants. And while that dream plays out here among immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba, it transcends the geography of South/Central/Latin America. 
Director Thomas Kail’s cast is without a weak link, with the ensemble radiating out from the charismatic center provided by Beltran his percussive, quicksilver rap poetry. Equally unforgettable is Santiago as the salon owner (and vibrant font of neighborhood gossip). She lights up the stage with a combination sass and brass as she portrays that rare sort of woman who makes the most brazen blond highlights look fabulous rather than cheap. With Carnaval del Barrio, she delivers a defiant party anthem and an irresistible celebration. Also fine is Gonzalez-Nacer as Vanessa. With “It Won’t Be Long Now,” she combines effortless sex appeal with ferocious feminism, dismissing boys who whistle because they have “nothing to say” with a saunter and a saucy, empowered tilt of the head.
And as the elderly Abuela Claudia, Santora is luminous, instilling “Paciencia y Fe “ (Patience and Faith) with a bone-deep spirituality and unmistakable belief in the glories of things to come.
The other star here is Blankenbuehler’s choreography, a marvel of kinetic beauty. “The Club/Fireworks” is one of the best first act finales you’ll find in a musical, complex and flamboyant as a fire-cracker in its its gorgeous, fiery athleticism.
With a live band in the pit, In the Heights sounds as good as it looks. As winter closes in, it’s a show with heat and vivacity to spare.
In the Heights continues through Jan. 3 at the Cadillac Palace, Ford Center for the Performing Arts, 151 W. Randolph St. Tickets are $18 - $90 and are currently on sale. Tickets can be purchased at all Broadway In Chicago Box Offices (24 W. Randolph St., 151 W. Randolph St. and 18 W. Monroe St.); the Broadway In Chicago Ticket Line at (800) 775-2000. For more information go to www.BroadwayInChicago.com or www.intheheightsthemusical.com.
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