«Right now, you and I are a thousand miles from Havana. But a sound like this tends to travel ». These are the first words that come out every night of the tables of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. We are in the heart of Broadway, where the … last Wednesday it was released The musical version of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’.
And so much that he has traveled. ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ was a musical phenomenon that broke in the late 1990s and that ate the world. It was an irresistible cocktail: recovery, forty years later, a group of Cuban musicians as virtuous as – most of them – forgotten. It was like finding a fossil of a golden age of music in Cuba -the hatching of the son, the dancers, the boleros, the ‘filin’ jazzero -, just prior to the rupture of the communist revolution. But an extraordinary fossil, with septuagenarian musicians – the younger ones – covered with a patina of taste and knowledge that only gives time. They got together, the legend tells, in ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ a humble place in Havana.
Musicians like Ibrahim Ferrer, Omar Portuondo, Compan Segundo or Rubén González They defended that the violin rope sounds better than ever when it is about to break. And signed an unforgettable album in 1997 and a 1999 Wim Wenders documentary. Then came tours, own albums of many of them and, together, a rebirth worldwide of Cuban popular music.
Of the main cast of that project are only alive Portuondo, converted to his 94 years into the great musical totem of Cuba (He recorded an album, awarded with a ‘Grammy’, in 2023) and ELÍADES OCHOAthe magician of three. Until both the news of the Successful resurrectiononce again, ‘Buena Vista Social Club’, now in the musical format and on Broadway.
Photograph assigned by Matthew Murphy of a scene during the trial of the musical ‘Buena Vista Social Club’.
EFE
The work premiered a couple of years ago outside Broadway, in a more modest version, and now, after a certain filming, it has premiered with great reception of criticism and public. «It is the most intoxicating and snatching show this season on Broadway», Celebrates the criticism of ‘Variety’. “The connections between musicians, songs and a society have rarely evoked as vivid and loving as in ‘Buena Vista Social Club’,” adds that of ‘The New York Times’.
After several previous sessions – this newspaper attended one of them – and of others since its premiere, the musical version of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ Put the ‘No tickets’ poster every night. Something that other of the great premieres of this season, such as ‘Boop’, ‘Redwood’ or ‘Smash’ have not achieved.
The story
The work takes muscle muscle from its first measures: a good part of the cast, on the stage, browsing the Guajira ‘El Carretero’. But ‘Buena Vista Social Club’, the musical, is also theater and needs a story. This is introduced by the character of Juan de Marcos, the musicology student who discovered the history of that neighborhood club and located his lost musicians among the chipped houses of Havana. Then came the American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder -Sorprende that does not appear anywhere in the musical– And Wenders to bring the phenomenon around the world.
“Part of what comes from now on is true,” says Juan de Marcos, played by Justin Cunningham from the tables. «And part just does it true». In what has to do with the plot, almost everything is more than the second. Much turns around Portuondo: his decision to stay in Cuba and, therefore, to separate from his sister, Haydée, with which he made an artistic duo; his slight affair with Ibrahim Ferrer; Their friendship with Compay second in those years, the diffuse references to the communist revolution … All that is an excuse little close to reality, to structure the musical. And also the most indebble of the work, as the criticism of ‘The Guardian’ points out: «’Buena Vista Social Club’ is richer than a conventional concert, but substantially thinner than a true great play».
The success of the plot is that it places the action in two moments: The Cuba of the late 1950s and the one in the late 1990swhen the musicians meet and the album is recorded. The format is a wink to the original project -remember yesterday’s songs -doubles the actors that interpret the characters and encourage dialogue between times and plots.
If the script causes doubts, music fixes them. There is no plot that does not surrender to the power of the songs, stripped of Broadway’s artifice, treated with the respect they deserve. ‘Candela’, ‘Chan-chan’, ‘La Negra Tomasa’ or ‘On the way to the sidewalk’ occur, and one has to screw his feet to the ground so as not to dancing or covering his mouth so as not to define and disturb the neighboring armchair. An ‘Oh’ is heard when it is announced that ‘Dos Gardenias’ will sing and the respectable’s eyes illuminate when the stage is filled with dancers, something non -existent in the other formats.
Leave away from Spanish
The Hispanic ear, unlike the Anglo tourist mass that fills Broadway, will detect – even with discomfort – that some of the actors did not be raised with the Spanish. It shows especially in the voice of the main protagonist, Natalie Venetia Belcon, born in Trinidad and Tobago, which plays the veteran port. It has an overwhelming presence, but Without the elegance and fineness of Portuondowith which any comparison would always be unfair.
He leaves the Spanish is also heard in others, such as Wesley Wray, Jamaican, who gets into the skin of young Ibrahim Ferrer. “But I am a Caribbean!” It justifies with this newspaper, with a huge smile, after a performance, while signing autographs at the exit of the theater.
Neither that, nor an abrupt ending – it would even expect a closure with a miniconciente, a ‘medley’ of songs – they remove brightness, energy and taste of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’.
“The best music was always from other sides, never from here,” says Marcos at a time of the work. That was never true, as demonstrated by ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ almost three decades ago and how it is now remembered from Broadway.
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