'In the Heights': Beats With a Latino Pulse

NEW YORK -- The welcome news out of Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre is all about Lin-Manuel Miranda, the energetic multi-talent behind the endearing new musical "In the Heights."

Miranda wrote the music and the lyrics for this upbeat and up-tempo valentine to Upper Manhattan. Oh yeah: He's also the evening's star. Heck, for all I know, he had a hand in hanging the lights and designing the lobby posters.

Still, with some obvious help from librettist Quiara Alegr¿a Hudes, director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and a 24-member cast primed to get your juices flowing at all costs, Miranda has bequeathed to New York an evening of old-style, innocent pleasure.

The pulse of the show may throb to the rhythms

of hip-hop and salsa, but the impulse that drives

it is pure Broadway. Miranda and Hudes's achievement here is to have placed on the stage a story infused with the flavors of urban Latino culture and mixed them agreeably with the formulas of musical theater.

"In the Heights" is a concoction as accessible to the old as it is to the young; even in its intermingling of Spanish and English -- and most of it is in English -- the show seems an attempt to invite all comers with open arms.

The American musical has long been the most parasitic of art forms, adapting itself to all manner of popular stories and styles, from the operetta to the rock concert. On this occasion, it takes its inspiration from the street life and music of the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans who settled in the tenements and aging apartment buildings of a gritty uptown neighborhood known as Washington Heights. Hudes and Miranda manage to make "In the Heights" both an immigrant saga and an act of nostalgia, recalling the enclave for the mixture of aspiration and belonging that it engenders.

In the strains of a song as brief and airy as "Piragua," the Heights is made to seem a place of rarely acknowledged, homespun delights. Piragua is the Puerto Rican name for a snow cone, and during the show, actor Eliseo Roman wheels his cart of ices along an avenue of dingy facades, realized with admirable precision by set designer Anna Louizos. (She's the reigning specialist in streetscapes, having previously designed one for "Avenue Q.") Roman's hummable, well-performed ditty about plying a trade is the sweetest of tributes to that New York archetype, the street peddler.

Purists may take issue with some of the less refined aspects of "In the Heights," particularly the creaky mechanics of the plot, which leads us into the lives and struggles of a fairly predictable array of young and old city folk, romantics and realists alike. The musical segues choppily and not always in the most logical ways from one subplot to another, and few of the characters' stories are fleshed out to an entirely satisfying level.

But the people Miranda and Hudes dream up -- Miranda, bless him, also gets a "conceived by" credit in the program -- all possess that eminently bankable Broadway commodity: heart.

It is in and around the corner bodega of Miranda's own "Heights" alter ego, Usnavi, that the show percolates. The "American Graffiti"-style question that hangs in the air has to do with who will leave the neighborhood and who will stay. Orphaned and frustrated Usnavi, who has long had the hots for leggy Vanessa (the terrific Karen Olivo), is of a mind to sell and start somewhere new. Meantime, the local success story, Nina (a swell Mandy Gonzalez), has returned to the Heights for summer break from Stanford, where she's hit a financial-aid dead end. Her decision is the opposite: whether ever to leave the Heights again.

That's about all the cliffhanging the story provides. So apart from some crackling supporting roles -- Robin de Jes¿s's hilarious bodega assistant and Andr¿a Burns's saucy beauty shop owner are cases in point -- what hooks us on this enterprise is good ol' song and dance. And thanks to Blankenbuehler's fleet steps for the infectious production numbers, the barrio rocks.

Miranda is both the mastermind and the soul of the show; his Usnavi -- the derivation of the name is itself a surprise -- brings home the authentic affection with which "In the Heights" enshrines an ethnic enclave. If the show establishes itself as the hit it has every right to be, Miranda may have to amend the portrait to include a tour bus or two. For people may soon demand to gawk at the block made famous in that bubbling musical right off Times Square.

In the Heights, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, book by Quiara Alegr¿a Hudes. Directed by Thomas Kail. Choreography, Andy Blankenbuehler; set, Anita Louizos; costumes, Paul Tazewell; lighting, Howell Binkley; sound, Acme Sound Partners; orchestrations, Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman. With Priscilla Lopez, Christopher Jackson, Carlos Gomez, Olga Merediz. About 2 1/2 hours. At Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St. Call 212-307-4100 or visit http://www.ticketmaster.com.