Estefan musical finds its legs
It takes a while for “On Your Feet!” to find its footing.
Initial scenes, which try to breeze through the childhood of trailblazing, Grammy-amassing Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan, portend a touring Broadway show too shaky to stand. In this pastel-saturated Miami, relationships are so wispy, the adults and obligations in young Gloria’s life so hazy, that actors seem to be wincing through or muffling their lines on purpose, as
if they’re trying to absorb the brunt of the script’s deficiencies to protect their audience. Even Sergio Trujillo’s choreography, in which women brandish the hems of their skirts like they’re scythes chopping off enemies’ heads, can’t invigorate the featherweight dramaturgy.
It seemed an inauspicious opening for SHN’s newly renovated Golden Gate Theatre, where the show opened Wednesday, Sept. 12, with welcoming speeches from Willie Brown and Jane Kim, among others. One of the first songs, stealing brazenly from another, more successful musical, is “Tradición.” Exposition is blatantly declared, rather than shown and felt: Gloria (Christie Prades) has been “nursing a father with multiple sclerosis,” says her grandmother (Alma Cuervo), with all the emotional impact of a front lawn sign.
Much as characters repeatedly assert how hard their lives are, fame and success seem to fall into Gloria’s lap. Her future business partner and husband Emilio (Mauricio Martínez) materializes (wearing perilously short shorts, by costume designer Emilio Sosa) out of nowhere on her doorstep to invite her to audition for his band, the Miami Latin Boys (later called the Miami Sound Machine).
All it takes for Gloria to overcome her supposed preternatural shyness is one performance. Gloria and Emilio slide from first romantic sparks into comfortable marriage, and Miami Sound Machine goes from playing weddings to dominating the Latin market, both with all the friction of butter skating across a warm pan. Each time an obstacle arises, you can bet it will be dispensed with, sitcom-style, before the next number. All of this might have been how it actually was for the superstar couple, who did the orchestrations for the show in addition to the music and lyrics, but it doesn’t kindle the kind of tension a musical needs.
“On Your Feet!” eventually rewards patience, though. The path to making “Conga” a successful crossover single — a possibility a record producer (Devon Goffman) describes earlier as “an illusion” — winds hysterically through a bar mitzvah, an Italian wedding and a convention of the fez-wearing Shriners. If Gloria and Emilio can get all these groups onstage at once to shake their bodies, unable to control themselves “any longer,” then any purported rule about which demographic can handle which genre of music might be mere prejudice and lack of imagination.
Prades has a tanned, unruffled voice that easily recalls that of her real-life counterpart, and Martínez’s singing is as silken and enveloping as a shawl you didn’t know you needed. As the power couple, the pair have chemistry that incorporates both teasing banter and guileless openness. Especially in the second act, they approach the barrage of obstacles the script throws at them with a forthright, everyman earnestness that makes shallow plot points — the family resentments, tour catastrophes and the-show-must-goon determination of a thousand VH1 “Behind the Music” specials — dig deep. It comes late in the game, but their relationship gives “On Your Feet!” a foundation to earn its name.