Broadway review by Adam Feldman
Buena Vista Social Club offers an irresistible tropical vacation. A celebration of Cuban musical history, it’s a getaway and a gateway: To attend this show—which premiered last season at the Atlantic Theatre, and has now moved to Broadway—is to enter a world thick with history that you’ll want to learn more about afterward, if you don’t know it already. While you’re there, though, you don’t need to think too hard. Just give yourself over to the sounds that pour out from the stage.
The 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club gathered an extraordinary group of elderly musicians to recreate the atmosphere and the traditional musical styles—son, boleros, guajiras—of a racially inclusive Havana nightspot before the Cuban Revolution. It became a worldwide sensation upon its release, and was the subject of a 1999 documentary film by Wim Wenders. Marco Ramirez’s stage version has a less factual bent. “Some of what follows is true,” says the bandleader Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham), who was instrumental in assembling the album’s participants. “Some of it only feels true.”
Buena Vista Social Club | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
The musical focuses on four of the album’s principal performers: vocalists Omara Portuondo (a regal Natalie Venetia Belcon) and Ibrahim Ferrer (Mel Semé), guitarist-singer Compay Segundo (Julio Monge) and pianist Rubén González (Jainardo Batista Sterling). Scenes from the album’s 1996 recording process alternate with flashbacks to younger versions of the same characters nearly 40 years earlier, when they are played, respectively, by Isa Antonetti, Wesley Wray, Da'Von Moody and Leonardo Reyna; these counterparts are all new additions to the cast except Reyna, who plays rangy piano solos of his own devising. The 1950s scenes also feature Ashley De La Rosa as Omara’s sister, with whom she performed at the whiter and more upscale club El Tropicana. Perhaps for dramatic economy, this account does not even namecheck the project’s British initiator, Nick Gold, and its American producer and slide guitarist, Ry Cooder. (The real-life De Marcos and Gold are credited as consultants.)
Buena Vista Social Club | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Director Saheem Ali keeps the toggling structure evocative and clear, with valuable help from Dede Ayite’s costumes, Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, Tyler Micoleau’s sultry lighting and Jonathan Deans’s top-notch sound design. But although Ramirez’s script hits its marks, it has become even more generic than it was at the Atlantic, with an even less credible timeline. Fortunately, the plot is just a hanger for the musical numbers, which is where Buena Vista Social Club comes to thrilling life. The show makes no attempt to rope its score into character work; all 15 songs, of which 10 were part of the original 1996 recording sessions, are presented as performances in nightclubs or studios, sometimes heightened by the six excellent dancers who execute Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck’s gorgeously fluid and individuated choreography. The lyrics are untranslated, but that hardly matters. The music itself is the story.
Buena Vista Social Club | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
Credit, then, to the music team for this production, led by creative consultant David Yazbek, music supervisor Dean Sharenow and musical director, arranger and orchestrator Marco Paguia. And credit, too, to the terrific ten-piece band that evokes the original ensemble’s artistry so excitingly. Resenito Avich, playing tresero Eliades Ochoa, has a breathtaking solo in the second act, but each of the instrumentalists gets a chance to shine, and they take the show’s final bow together as a group. They’re true to the feeling. The son remains the same.
Buena Vista Social Club. Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre (Broadway). Book by Marco Ramirez. Music and lyrics by various writers. Directed by Saheem Ali. With Natalie Venetia Belcon, Isa Antonetti, Mel Semé, Wesley Wray, Julio Monge, Resenito Avich, Leonardo Reyna, Jainardo Batista Sterling, Da'Von Moody, Ashley De La Rosa. Running time: 2hrs 15mins. One intermission.
Follow Adam Feldman on X: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Adam Feldman on Bluesky: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Adam Feldman on Threads: @adfeldman
Follow Time Out Theater on X: @TimeOutTheater
Keep up with the latest news and reviews on our Time Out Theater Facebook page
Buena Vista Social Club | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
