Entertain thyself, continued (In the Heights)

On my last post, I really meant to include "In the Heights" but it slipped through the cracks. Guess that's the priority: sports, movie, musicals.

After flirting briefly with TKTS, we decided to get our tickets from Plum, which actually offered better seats for the same price. Front mezzinine, front row for $80ish.

I liked the show overall. It depicts the local life of a bunch of immigrants from South America... which reminded me a bit of Rent (about a local group of yuppies).

• Music: Good music with some rap and latino flare mixed in with regular musical songs. It was a venture into some new music on stage and I thought they did a marvelous job on it. Rap voice doesn't travel as well as sung voice, so it was sometimes drowned out by the orchestra music. There's also a bit of Spanish in the songs, tho they do a decent job of mixing in the translation in the dialouge. The next version would most definitely be much improved
• Cast: Decent performances from the cast. The lead guy (Usnavi) was pretty good with his rap but lacked expression on stage. The other leads were decent - Benny was consistent through out and performed well; Nina shined in the first act but faded in the second act. Decent performances for the rest of the cast.
  
• Story: Well, it's your standard musical story. Introduction to all (smartly done), tension builds, someone dies, and all is resolved at the end. I enjoyed the 2nd act much better than the 1st, which I thought was a bit noisy and chaotic with the story free-flowing towards nowhere... thankfully it all tightened up in the 2nd act
  
• Set: The set was somewhat boring with little interaction...

I enjoy musicals... but haven't gone to much while in NYC. Just not a priority compared to others!