It’s been a couple of weeks, so I hope my memory holds up. But overall I enjoyed this show very much. Sure, it is a little cheesy-Spanish-soap-opera-set-to-rap-music and the plot is wisp thin, but that aside, the real star of the show is the direction and the friggin’ cool choreography supplied by Andy Blankenbuehler. Everything about the dance and musical staging was dynamic, interesting and modern - all things that most choreography currently on Broadway is not.Performances across the board are excellent. Vocally, it’s probably the strongest cast I’ve heard on a Broadway stage in a long time. These beeyatches actually know how to use their mix and don’t feel the need to power belt through everything - I’m talking to you cast of Wicked! And although the cast manages very successfully to negotiate within the pop idiom, they tastefully and conservatively riffed through the score, happily avoiding American Idol style self-indulgent vocal masturbation.
If you’re looking for deep, multi-layered Sondheim symbolism, don’t expect it here. It’s like the best episode of Ugly Betty crossed with the musical sensibility of the Altar Boyz filtered through a purely urban New York lens.
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