‘In the Heights’ at the Walnut

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Fiddler On the Roof on Broadway in the 1960s. Two nuns seated behind me kept whispering, “How true.” At the Walnut I’m sure there were non-Hispanics feeling the same thing about In the Heights.

The opening scene may startle most Anglo theatergoers. It’s morning on a street in Washington Heights, in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge. This time our guide is not Tevye but Usnavi (the likable and charismatic Perry Young), who’s opening his bodega for the day, greeting his neighbors and explaining to the audience where everyone is from and what’s going on.

Usnavi’s vocal medium is hip hop and rap, but we soon realize he’s a worldly young man who quotes Cole Porter and refers to Duke Ellington’s “A Train.” His vocabulary includes words like hypothetical and braggadocio, used naturally and correctly, not like he’s showing off.

Against intermarriage

As In the Heights progresses, this New York community consisting of strangers from other places appears to be fracturing. A local cab service, a bodega and a hair salon are about to close and some of the residents are ready to move away.

Sounds like Anatevka, no?

One other hint of Fiddler: A traditional Latino father forbids his daughter from dating a black man who works for him and lives on the same block, simply because he’s from a different ethnic group.

To be sure, these villagers of Washington Heights are not victimized by pogroms. For another, the protective father doesn’t perceive blacks as the enemies of his race. Instead, he feels they’re inferior.

The principal characters are "Abuela" Claudia (Rayanne Gonzales), the loving matriarch of the barrio who looked after Usnavi when his parents died; the cab company owner Kevin Rosario (Danny Bolero); his daughter Nina Rosario (Julia Hunter), who has gone to Stanford University on an academic scholarship; Usnavi’s love interest, Vanessa (Gizel Jimenez), who works at the salon; and the Rosario’s ambitious employee Benny (Rhett George) who becomes involved with Nina.

Exuberant percussionist

One of this musical’s strengths is its ability to echo universal themes and even Broadway traditions at the same time that it celebrates Latin culture and music. Usnavi speaks and sings with a New York accent (he was raised there by parents just arrived from the Dominican Republic), while most of his neighbors have Latin accents and use Spanish words. Their music and dance steps reflect the varied Latin-American countries of their origins.

The score bubbles with exuberant and catchy songs. The nine-player orchestra includes a guest percussionist, born in Cuba, who plays a huge variety of instruments, including shakers, scrapers, drums and five sizes (therefore five pitches) of carnival bells. His most exotic instruments are the caxixi, which is a woven sack filled with seeds and stones, and the cajÓ³n, a six-sided wooden percussion instrument played by slapping its surfaces. Music director Douglass Lutz presides as if he has spent a lifetime with this genre.

The Latin color is especially prevalent in Nina’s song, “Breathe,” when she regrets that she may be separating herself from her roots, and the Abuela’s song “Paciencia y Fe” (“Patience and Faith”) when she recalls her youth in Cuba.

The show’s sole miscalculation is the casting of Nina’s mother— Rosario’s wife— with Kimberly S. Fairbanks, who looks not at all like either of them; in fact, not Hispanic, although we are told came over with her husband from Puerto Rico a quarter-century ago.