Review by Carole Di Tosti
If you are a world music lover, you don’t need any introduction to the Buena Vista Social Club™, an ensemble of Cuban musicians and a legendary singer that Cuban producer Juan de Marcos brought together in Havana to record a fabulous album that won a Grammy in 1997. Juan de Marcos is to be credited for his passion to capture the striking beauty and spirit of traditional Afro-Cuban music, while some of the BVSC members were still alive. The chronicle of their resurgence is the subject of the titular 1999 Wim Wenders’s Academy Award nominated documentary that rocked them into the stratosphere of global fame.
In a gift that keeps on giving, the BVSC inspired the titular stage musical which was extended twice at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2023. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali, with book by Marco Ramirez, music by the Buena Vista Social Club™, with David Yazbeck as creative consultant, the musical has fulfilled its destiny, transferring to Broadway. Buena Vista Social Club™ premiered Wednesday, March 19th at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre with great fanfare in a run scheduled to end on June 1, 2025.
Like the album the production displays an ebullient magnificence of song styles (Bolero, Son Cubano, Danzón), from Cuba’s golden age of music. The BVSC playlist is sung in their native language. For English speakers, an artfully designed, informative booklet of the composers and song descriptions is tucked into the Playbill.
Saheem Ali’s staging makes apt use of the space in the larger Broadway venue. The musical pulsates with its brilliant tonal hues, Afro-Cuban clave rhythms, dances, and charged movements, kindling the passion of the audience who never sit still. This phenomenal show appropriately fills its new home as a celebration of Cuba’s hardships and triumphs, magnifying its story through musical folk traditions with a sonority that is unforgettable. Finally, with its revised cast Buena Vista Social Club™ gives a reverential bow to the album, the documentary, and the incredible musicians, who were vaulted to a success they had never known when they started out. It’s a remarkable and moving story of second chances.
Set in the 1990s and 1950s, the production is loosely narrated by Juan De Marcos (Justin Cunningham). Its song list (from the album and additional music), steeped in the social club’s cadences, spiritually manifests the history and diversity of the Cuban people. The sensational band directed by Marco Paguia, with music supervision by Dean Sharenow, opens with “El Carretero,” led by Eliades Ochoa (Renesito Avich). After the delirious applause, de Marcos says, “A sound like this, it tends to travel.” His prophetic remarks indicate how BVSC’s songs still resonate throughout the world today, even though the original members have passed. Only Omara Portuondo, the National treasure of Cuba still receives awards.
The musical tracks the ensemble from their recording at EGREM studios to the BVSC on tour, enjoying worldwide acclaim and a performance at Carnegie Hall. However, Marco Ramirez uses a character as the device to tell the origin story of the BVSC, which disappeared with all the social clubs that Castro disbanded to end discrimination in Cuban society.
The character is the legendary Omara Portuondo, portrayed with power and heart by Natalie Venetia Belcon. The conflict is that Omara has stopped singing, though she still has a great voice. The musical focuses on Omara and the ensemble, employing flashbacks in the 1950s when they met. With songs and dances that suggest Omara’s reflections and emotions about the past, forty years later, she reconciles with the BVSC, singing songs in a defining moment for all of them.
Omara is an important symbol of transition. She is the bridge between the rich and the poor, the socially upscale strata of Cuban society, and the segregated. She is beloved. Her pain is identifiable. Indeed, in this musical, the character of Omara magnifies the best of Cuban culture. She recalls the past and weds it to the present in the tears and pain of the loss of family and her sister Haydee.
Though the truth is different, the inspired story reveals undercurrents and conflict. It theatricalizes how the songs represent Omara and the musicians’ lives. Initially, Omara refuses de Marcos’ offer to record with the reconstituted band. We later discover that her aloof response masks pain from her estrangement with her sister and niece because of Castro’s Revolution and the U.S. embargo barring travel between the two countries.
Cleverly, de Marcos leaves a recording of Omara singing with the BVSC forty years before. As she listens to her younger self singing a few bars of “Lágrimas Negras,” she’s stirred. Ali stages the moment with Isa Antonetti as Young Omara in silhouette. Excited, Omara says, “Son of a bitch!” Though she is conflicted, she goes to the studio. There, she meets world-class band members and old friends. These include the funny, confident Compay (Julio Monge), Eliades (Renesito Avich), and Rubén (Jainardo Batista Sterling). When Omara is ready, Juan eventually brings the sweet, loving Ibrahim (Mel Semé), to the studio. Thus, the fitful process unspools of Omara’s reconciliation with her past.
During flashback scenes in the 1950s at their upscale home, we meet Young Omara (Isa Antonetti), and her sister Young Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa). They rehearse “El Cumbanchero,” to sing at the Tropicana with two covers they have never met, Young Compay (Da’Von T. Moody), and Young Rubén (Leonardo Reyna). The musicians invite Omara to sing with them at the BVSC venue in the Black neighborhood of Buenavista.
Despite Haydee’s warning of the danger and their different cultural heritage, Omara joins the musicians and meets Young Ibrahim (Wesley Wray). When Ibrahim beautifully interprets “Bruca Maniguá,” he sings about freedom in the Bozal language of first-generation slaves. Songwriter Arsenio Rodríguez described the words as “the Congo language of our ancestors.” Omara is overwhelmed. She feels at home with the music, dancing and vibrant atmosphere.
Contrasting the Tropicana with the Buena Vista Social Club™, Ramirez references the historical, social schemata of a diverse, segregated Cuba, including its past in the slave trade, the divisions between the rich and the poor, and Castro’s plan to bring equality to the country that backfired and instead, created misery. This was exacerbated after the revolution, the evacuation of wealthy Cubans and the middle class, and a life under communism without Russian support, during the “Special Period.”
It is the older Compay who states the theme that haunts Omara. There were all types of Cubans, doctors and pickpockets, but then it became “the ones who stayed” and “the ones who left.” Omara stays in Cuba, saying goodbye to Haydee, who leaves on a plane for the U.S. to pursue a record contract which falls through. Their goodbye scene is enhanced by an interpretive, emotional dance which suggests why Omara blames herself for never seeing Haydee again.
The dance sequences, portraying the Young Omara and Young Haydee, are choreographed by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. Stylistically, they show the difference in opinion between the sisters about the BVSC. Also emphasized is the theme of Omara’s loss of her sister and family. In her portrayal of Omara, Belcon’s superb singing resonates with emotional poignancy. Though the Cuban people suffered from both governments’ political machinations, it is in the power of their traditional songs that the Cuban people receive catharsis and are uplifted with dignity.
The BVSC’s immutable human values conveyed in their electric, spiritual rhythms and lustrous music is what inspires fans globally to appreciate their egalitarian message. Though the power-hungry may try to divide and conquer, the music of the people transcends hardship. It unifies with joy and love.
The creative team, musicians, singers and dancers beautifully express the director’s stylized vision of the BVSC (1950s, 1996). Additional kudos go to those not mentioned above. These include Arnulfo Maldonado (sets), Dede Ayite (costumes), Tyler Micoleau (lighting), Jonathan Deans (sound), J. Jared Janas (hair, wigs & makeup), Marco Paguia (music director, orchestrations & arrangements), Javier Diaz and David Oquendo (additional arrangements), the swings and the fabulous band.
Buena Vista Social Club™ runs 2 hours 10 minutes with one intermission. The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre is on 236 West 45th between 7th and 8th Ave. https://buenavistamusical.com/
Production Photos by Matthew Murphy
