When 'In The Heights' Began At Wesleyan, Part 1
With the film version of “In the Heights” now in theaters and on HBO Max, I’m posting just a few of the stories I wrote when the show began at Wesleyan University', then to a basement reading at the old Drama Book Store, then to off-Broadway, then Broadway and then on tour.
This piece ran in 2007.
By FRANK RIZZO
Lin-Manuel Miranda walks down Broadway with an energetic strut of a man who's on top of the world. But he's far from the stretch of street near Times Square that most associate with the famous road. Miranda is strolling in the neighborhood north of the Washington Bridge in the area known as Washington Heights and Inwood, far from the dazzle of the theater district but with a vitality and vision all its own.
"See these little shops?" he says. "They're all family-owned. It's a real people, it's a real community here."
He passes bodegas, unisex hair salons, schools, health centers, coffee shops, Ecuadorian and Dominican eateries and the apartment building where his parents still live and not far from where he lives now. This colorful collage of sights, sounds and flavors is where Miranda grew up -- only to leave when he went to college at Wesleyan University.
But he didn't forget his neighborhood, and when he was a sophomore in the fall of 1999 he started working on a musical about the place he knows so well.
"In the Heights," a new off-Broadway musical that he conceived, wrote the music and lyrics for and stars in, opened in February, receiving the kind of reviews a novice composer dreams about. If some are suggesting that the exuberant show could be just the feel-good tonic to balance Broadway's more dark and disturbing brews, it's understandable. Its producers, after all, are the same who took hip and heartfelt off-Broadway shows such as "Rent" and "Avenue Q" and made them long-lasting Broadway hits.
But Broadway or no, this $2.5 million production is a triumph of perseverance and marks an impressive debut of a new musical star. In a recent performance, composer John Kander ("Cabaret," "Chicago") was the first to leap to his feet, later saying that such talent as Miranda inspires him to go home and write. (Since that performance Kander and Miranda have been e-mail pen pals.)
The critical response has been as loving for the sweet-natured show that merges rap, hip-hop, salsa and merengue with traditional Broadway musical styles. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times calls the musical "a singing mural of Latin American life that often …CONTINUED