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If you can imagine Do the Right Thing mellowing out, learning Spanish, and bursting frequently into song, you’d get near In the Heights. Like Spike Lee’s joint, this musical is a fond portrait of a New York neighborhood, in this case a Latino corner of Washington Heights bounded by the 181st Street A-train stop (downstage left) and the G.W. Bridge (upstage center). Stories in such communities have been very good to American theater (Puerto Ricans, West Side—ring a bell?), but no one’s going to mistake this show for its celebrated predecessor. Delightfully enough, here’s a musical that owes more to Big Pun than to Bernstein. Lin-Manuel Miranda has real affection for Broadway, shouting out to Cole Porter in one early number. Yet like the creators of Spring Awakening, he and librettist Quiara Alegría Hudes don’t try to ape Broadway’s old orchestral sound, or the corny bombast that a million failed jukebox musicals seem unable to kill. Just weeks after Duncan Sheik dragged Broadway screaming into the world of indie rock, they’ve claimed another swath of new sonic terrain for theater. — Jeremy McCarter

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Jeremy McCarter's Full Review (2/26/07)