Well, we had a busy summer, didn’t we? No sooner had everybody caught their breath after the Profiles Theatre harassment scandal, with its satisfyingly dramatic climax (storefront windows plastered over with copies of the Reader cover story, Profiles abruptly shuttered), than we were confronted with another controversy: Porchlight Music Theatre announced that the lead role of Usnavi in its new staging of In the Heights would be played by Jack DeCesare.
In the Heights makes a great test case for all of this, because the show (an early draft of which played at Wesleyan University in 1999, when Miranda was a student there) is all about the alleged tension between ethnic loyalty and membership in the United States.
That’s not a problem for the cast as a whole, though. I can point out plenty of vivid individual efforts: Frankie Leo Bennett’s Bowery Boys raffishness as Usnavi’s employee, Sonny; Isabel Quintero’s happy-Buddha radiance as Usnavi’s substitute mom, Abuela Claudia; Stan DeCwikiel Jr.’s pure tenor as the local shaved-ice guy. But it’s the sense of ensemble energy that makes this In the Heights delightful. You’d almost think all the wrangling over DeCesare brought them together. v
Through 10/23: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM Stage 773 1225 W. Belmont 773-327-5252porchlightmusictheatre.org $43-$51
