Critics go giddy for In the Heights
Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage
★★★★
"If you're in the mood, it's a great night out, the Puerto Rican/Dominican Spanish-speaking community blown apart – personal problems, a power cut, a riot – then soldered together in the ravishing ensemble numbers of carnival and celebration choreographed by Drew McOnie."
"Sam Mackay's compelling and technically brilliant Usnavi."
"How the plot threads are untangled reeks of workshop rather than dynamic theatricality, but there are some electrifying sequences to compensate for dips in the dialogue, and beautiful set pieces under the night sky, and at a neighbourhood funeral."
Bella Todd, Time Out
★★★★
"A rap-meets-salsa musical set in the Latino community of Manhattan’s Washington Heights, it remains as colourful, refreshing and full of Puerta Rican zing as a frozen fruit Piragua slurped between lovers on the sidewalk."
"It’s Victoria Hamilton-Barritt…who provides the defining image. Heavily pregnant in real life and still working the bodycons, she hurls a leg over the top of one of two freewheeling fire escapes and has at the high note with everything she’s got."
"This is musical theatre bursting with new life."
Sam Marlowe, The Times
★★★★
"Its book, by Quiara Alegría Hudes, is soap-opera formulaic, its colourful characters as two-dimensional as the spray-painted graffiti on the grimy steel and brickwork of the set by Takis. Yet it’s delivered with such seductive, hip-swivelling, heart-stopping élan that reservations are swiftly stamped out beneath its strutting feet."
"The cast attack their roles with conviction: Sam Mackay as a young bodega-owner, Jade Ewen as the drop-dead hot, fervently aspirational girl he adores, and David Bedella as a father fighting to keep his cab firm afloat are outstanding."
"An exhilarating riot of passion, steam and swagger."
Mark Shenton, The Stage
★★★★★
"In the Heights… is a big contagious hug of a show that grabs its characters with palpable affection and love, and stirs them into a giddy, gorgeous portrait of a real community on the cusp of irrevocable change."
"Once again the genius of choreographer Drew McOnie draws on street dance to make it both highly disciplined and intricately inevitable; the fluidity of movement is simply amazing. The dance ensemble is a major piece of the theatrical jigsaw created, but every principal is stylishly propelled into movement."
"There's such energy here that you are utterly swept away."
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
★★★★
"Quiara Alegría Hudes’s book is weak, but this hugely talented cast make you feel that something is genuinely at stake. ey throw themselves at the material and around the stage in Drew McOnie’s electrifying choreography as if their very lives depended upon it."
"Miranda’s score and lyrics, with rhyming so witty and sharp it constantly undercuts itself, make it seem as if singing and dancing are the most natural form of expression for this group of people."
"A brilliantly enjoyable night that lights up London theatre."
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard
★★★★
"Quiara Alegría Hudes’s book may be slight, and the show feels too long."
"Drew McOnie’s pulsating choreography ensures that the intertwined love stories are told with racy dynamism."
"Luke Sheppard’s production, which originated at Southwark Playhouse, has soul as well as plenty of sizzle."
In the Heights runs at King's Cross Theatre until 3 January 2016.
