*Buena Vista Social Club,* Oct 6 2026
Nicola, Wendy, and I saw *Buena Vista Social Club* on Broadway on Oct 6, 2026.
It's inspired by the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary about an American music producer going to Havana to convince retired (and mostly forgotten) Cuban musicians to reunite for a concert. The musical centers on the same content as the film but also flashes back to the late 1950s, when the musicians were young.
We were lucky to have seen Natalie Venetia Belcon in the central role of Omara. She won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical - - she was still doing the show a year and a half after it opened and was about to be replaced by another actress a week after we saw it. She was tremendous, she sang with great power and had deep, effortless gravitas. Here she is singing a fabulous ballad from the show:
My other favorite actor in the show was Wesley Wray as Young Ibrahim, the young version of the divine Ibrahim Ferrer. He was my favorite person in the movie, his singing was tender and lovely, reminiscent of Nat King Cole. Wray captured all of that and was also an impressive dancer. Here he is at 54 Below:
The highlight of the show was the band. They won a special Tony award, I don't believe a band or orchestra had ever won a Tony before. They were entirely deserving, they were essential to the quality of the show and they were unbelievably talented. The two standouts were flute player Hery Paz and pianist Jesús Pupo. Both were dazzling in their virtuosity and blew my mind with the inventiveness of their use of rhythm. The rest of the band would lay down a straightforward groove and they would go OFF with the most thrilling thing you can imagine. I will never forget their playing.
Here's Paz doing a tasty song in the studio. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing but his solo starts at 1:30:
And here's Pupo at Birdland. Can I see that shirt in a 44 long?
Which leads me to my takeaway from the show. It felt like it was two thirds narrative Broadway musical and one third concert and I would have preferred a reversal of those proportions, a concert with a story woven into it. But then maybe the music-only segments had that kind of impact because they were NOT the main dish. I don't know, I can see the value of both sides. I imagine they felt like it would work better as a traditional Broadway musical.
Comments