On Your Feet! (Broadway) (2015)

On Your Feet! Is full of concert-level energy. And much of the play is reminiscent of a concert. From the very beginning, the lights surrounding the stage frame shoot out into the audience in different colors. The curtain has silhouettes of fans in the concert pit lining its bottom. Then the curtain is swiftly pulled away to reveal the band on stage banging away at their instruments, sitting on an interesting moving platform that is sometimes in view and sometimes moved behind a wall towards the back of the stage. They come and go throughout the performance.

The first scene is probably one of the strongest from a staging perspective (not so much from a story perspective). We are introduced to the intricacies of the set, including a changing Miami backdrop, moving panels that simultaneously serve as location indicators and places to hide. The first scene is full of characters moving in and out as if by magic, appearing and disappearing behind curtains and walls (and presumably down a trapdoor) And the set pieces move surprisingly quickly.

Newcomer Ana Villafane brings great energy to the role of Gloria and I think she sounded remarkably similar to Estefan. Josh Segarra plays Emilio with a heavy accent that is so good that it is borderline offensive and at times indecipherable. Alma Cuervo as Gloria’s abuela brings some comedy to the show. And the children in the cast are lots of fun. They have quick moving little feet and the little girl has quite a voice.

The story is somewhat lacking. The first act and second acts are polar opposites. The second half takes a more somber tone to depict Estefan’s 1990 accident. The accident is depicted with more bright lights shined at the audience, but I think they could have come up with something more creative (especially after seeing Curious Incident’s take on the London metro system). But I think the show’s greatest strength was in its energy as depicted through fun electric Latin dancing by choreographer Sergio Trujillo, which was unsurprisingly lacking from act two. The story jumps around a lot. It does not dwell on anything quite long enough for it to be impactful, and it skips over plot points and then infers them in hindsight. Though there isn’t too much plot to speak of. At times, it even comes off a little self-indulgent. The message of the story is basically “you’re so great, Gloria” (there’s a whole set piece devoted to it)—well, there’s not much modesty.

It ends like Mamma Mia does (though ABBA does a better job of integrating the songs into the plot) with a medley of energetic songs. These are songs that they couldn’t find a place for in the show, so they’re all sort of just thrown at us in snippets all at once. The song list doesn’t appear in the playbill where it usually does opposite the cast. Instead the songs are listed in alphabetical, not chronological, order after all the cast bios. This, too, contributed to the feeling that it plays more like a concert than a musical.