In The Heights

 

It grew in me, but I wasn’t blown away by it

This just about underlined what I thought about Lin Manual Miranda’s intensely personal production of 

In The Heights. 

Now you could tell from the get go that this sprawling depiction of Miranda’s home “town” of Washington Heights , the Latina quarter of New York, was going to be a nostalgic homage to a diverse community which is longing for home or indeed desperate to escape it but, for me despite the colour, the huge flamboyant set pieces and the rhythms, it was all a bit too much. 

Anthony Ramos

Having said this, the cast was impeccable. Anthony Ramos is an instantly lovable leading man and Melissa  Barrera and Leslie Grace stand out as two twenty something women who are both trying to forge themselves a place in a city who still view latina women as nothing more than waitresses and maids and

 Olga Merediz also shines as the quarter’s gentle natured matriarch Abuela , an old lady who has never forgotten the poverty of her homeland of Cuba.

Enjoyable. Occasionally stunning, it’s worth seeing.

But I wasn’t blown away .

Olga Merediz

Chester races were on yesterday, so the city was buzzing with drunken race goers when we came out of the cinema. It felt like a Latina carnival itself. 

It was nice to go for supper late in a restaurant overlooking Bridge Street and watch the world stagger by

Big thank you to the Storyhouse front of house who gave me one of her bespoke masks when I forgot mine 

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3gXrMMk