New York, New York review

This new musical opens with an electrician shouting “I love this city!” to an uproarious audience. I’ll admit I rolled my eyes and wondered if the department of tourism was a producer. Yet postcard platitudes aside, the show, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, turns into something much richer. It weaves together the lives of characters – Black, Cuban and Irish-American – at the end of the Second World War. Taking little more than inspiration from the 1977 Martin Scorsese film, the Broadway musical iteration, with songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb as well as newer ones by Kander with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, aims to show a broader swathe of New York humanity.

With little plot, David Thompson and Sharon Washington’s book takes its time setting up its characters, each of whom has the same end goal: to share their music with the world. But how Mateo, a Cuban immigrant, reaches that goal is different to how Jimmy, a white Irish-American pianist, reaches it. Jimmy is married to a Black singer, Francine, who faces her own struggles against racism, sexism and segregation. The book threads their separate tales together, wringing tension from our connection to the characters and our desire to see them succeed.

Stroman’s staging keeps the various stories moving against a dancing backdrop of New York denizens, each a dramatic moment landing with maximum visual oomph and emotional impact. On Beowulf Boritt’s set of sliding fire escapes, there are always other people going about their lives, adjacent to, but unrelated to, the plot. It lends perspective; this musical can only tell so many stories, but there are thousands of others just next door.

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