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Usnavi runs a bodega in his neighborhood. He keeps giving free coffee to Vanessa, the woman he has a crush on and can’t bring himself to ask out. Everyone in the neighborhood buys lottery tickets at his spot. One day he realizes someone in the neighborhood has bought a winning ticket. He looks up the amount. How much could it be for? $1,000? $2,000?
He stops short. It’s for $96,000, the kind of money that goes a long way. It can change the course of someone’s life. Who won the money? And what are they going to do with it?
That’s just part of the plot of In The Heights, playing Wednesday and Thursday at Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School, with shows at 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
The first musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda (of Hamilton fame), it tells the story of people living in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, a vibrant Puerto Rican-Dominican enclave. Gentrification is knocking on the door and everyone’s just barely getting by. But everyone knows everyone, too — for better and for worse, though mostly for better. It’s a musical bursting with life about people pursuing their dreams. For co-directors Rob Esposito and Briana Bellinger-Dawson, putting on In the Heights at Co-op is the story of a dream realized.
Bellinger-Dawson saw the show in 2008 in its initial Broadway run, when she herself was a student at Co-op. “I was 17 years old and sure then,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m going to do this, some way, somehow,’ because I’m a theater junkie.”
Bellinger-Dawson grew up in Newhallville and graduated from Co-op High’s theater program in 2010 with acting and directing experience already under her belt. For her, getting into dance and theater felt like a calling. “I’ve been doing it since I was two and a half,” she said. “This is where I need to be. I feel most comfortable here.”
She now teaches dance and dramatic arts at Nathan Hale School and returns to Co-op to help out with its current theater program. This year marks her fourth as a teacher in New Haven’s public schools and she has directed at least 12 shows since high school. But she never forgot about In the Heights.
“It’s one of those shows that connects to home,” she said. She recognized herself and the people she knew in the characters she saw on stage, and the show’s soundtrack was on constant rotation for her ever since.
Putting on In The Heights at Co-op this year was Bellinger-Dawson’s idea, said Esposito, who has taught and directed theater at Co-op for 14 years. Esposito didn’t need a lot of convincing. He too knew that Co-op had to put on the musical at some point ever since seeing it at the Shubert, when it began its first national touring run. Where Bellinger-Dawson saw herself and her neighborhood in the musical, “I saw my grandparents in every moment,” Esposito said. The descendant of Italian immigrants who married into a Puerto Rican family, he connected to the musical as readily as Bellinger-Dawson did.
In The Heights centers on bodega owner Usnavi (José Resto), who is both protagonist and guide. Apart from silently pining for Vanessa (Audrey Adji) — who works a hair salon owned by the outspoken Daniela (Naiyara Diaz) — he dreams of finding a way to return to the Dominican Republic and looks after his grandmother Claudia (Jailene Resto), who is in a greater sense the neighborhood matriarch. Usnavi’s friend Benny (Rylan Mayo) works for Kevin Rosario (Tomás Echevarría), who runs a car service with his wife Camila (Yashaira Leguisamon). Their daughter Nina (Alanna Cajigas) has just returned from her first year at Stamford under less-than-auspicious circumstances, and it’s unclear if and how she will return. Nina and Benny may have something romantic between them — though Nina’s father Kevin disapproves. Vanessa, meanwhile, would simply like to land a better job and move downtown. For all of them, money would help solve their problems, but money, unlike community, is in short supply. Until that winning lottery ticket shows up.
Resto and Resto.
It’s easy to see why Bellinger-Dawson and Esposito always knew they would bring In The Heights to Co-op, which has theatrical and musical chops to spare in bringing the show to life. José Resto shines as Usnavi, deftly balancing his Everyman role with the superb rapping ability the role requires, as he conveys his characters strength, charm, and winning mixture of realism and optimism. Jailene Resto likewise grounds the production as Claudia, particularly in a moving number that allows us to see into the matriarch’s past to understand how she became the woman she is.
Adji’s Vanessa is likewise much more than an idealized love interest. She’s a down-to-earth person who knows who she is and what she wants out of life, but has few illusions about what it will take to realize her ambitions. And at the same time, she effortlessly commands the stage when she’s on it; she makes us see what Usnavi sees in her.
Cajigas, meanwhile, lets us see Nina as a complex young woman, bearing some of the responsibility of her family’s ambitions to leave the barrio and at the same time feeling strong attachment to it. She’s a smart person unaccustomed to failure who has seriously stumbled for the first time in her life, and Cajigas shows us both her intelligence and her fragility.
What makes In The Heights so vibrant as a musical is its invocation of the neighborhood. It’s a love letter to Washington Heights, full of heart and humanity. Co-op’s student artists do the musical proud. We get to see the noisy dance club where people go to blow off steam, and maybe generate a little, too.
Daniela’s hair salon, place of neighborhood news and gossip, is brought vividly to life, thanks in particular to Diaz’s spirited performance of Daniela herself, who doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone and yet seems to be looking out for everyone.
The show’s dance ensemble (Lihame Arouna, Des’Tahnee Manick-Highsmith, Jaylyn Rogers, Jan Rosello Viera, and Cianela Rosino) convey the energy of street life at every turn. Even the piragüero — the guy who runs the shaved ice cart on the block — gets his moment in the sun, which actor Ajibola Tajudeen winningly makes the most of.
“This is an all-school musical,” Esposito said. Out of 645 students at Co-op, 90 of them are involved in the production, from its wonderful — and wonderfully accurate — set to its evocative lighting to the pit orchestra, which alone requires 20 musicians. Under the direction of Kevin James (Co-op class of 2014), the musicians rock Miranda’s pulsing, ebullient score as it hops from rhythm to rhythm and genre to genre.
In The Heights is a musical full of soul. From the faces and voices of all who appear on stage, it’s clear that the student artists of Co-op High have more than enough heart to match.
In The Heights runs at the main stage theater of Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, 177 College St., on March 20 and 21, with shows at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 for students, teachers, and seniors and $15 for adults. Tickets will be sold at the office and at the door.