In the Heights

CHAT ROOM Burns, seated left, and Gonzales, right, gossip about the neighborhood.

Photograph: Joan Marcus

When city dwellers make musicals about their ’hoods, too often the grit and dirt and heartbreak becomes suburban schmaltz. Granted, most musicalized subjects acquire a candy sheen, but the makeover is particularly tacky when one knows the source. Give 19th-century Germany a rock score; let proud Oklahomans warble and jig. But after the cheesy Rent and Brooklyn, do we really want to risk a tuner about modern-day Washington Heights? By no means the worst of its kind, In the Heights is still a cloying love letter to Hispanic inhabitants of northern Manhattan.

This lovingly realized project does have some barrio bona fides: Composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda can spin an infectious salsa number, and he busts out amusing raps for his Afro-Cuban score. At one point, Miranda—who stars as bodega-owning mensch Usnavi—taunts a friend: “Oh no, here goes Mr. Braggadocio / Next thing you know, he’s lying like Pinocchio.” Quiara Alegría Hudes’s book is grounded in patches of attractively homey dialogue. But overall, the storytelling is too safely sentimental to generate much heat. Neither Miranda nor Hudes goes beyond bromidic clichés in addressing cultural assimilation, class struggle and the cost of “keeping it real” while the world changes around you. And there are simply too many similar-sounding, dramatically unjustified songs where well-wrought scenes would do wonders.

On the plus side, director Thomas Kail commands a first-rate cast, including Priscilla Lopez, Karen Olivo, Mandy Gonzalez and the vivacious Andréa Burns. These lovely and talented local divas almost make you want to take the uptown express. — David Cote