Charisma and conga carry touring ‘On Your Feet!’

Narrative thin in Gloria Estefan jukebox musical, but show will get you dancing

Punctuation in a play’s title is more than just grammatically effective. It’s instructive.

The slash in “If/Then,” for instance, offers insight into the show’s narrative structure. The brackets and lowercasing in “[title of show]” embody the production’s impertinence. The question mark in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” suggests the very dramatic ambiguity that dominates Edward Albee’s play.

And then there is the exclamation point.

In “Oklahoma!” the punctuation turns the title into a definitive statement about the musical’s significance. The same exclamation point is intentionally sarcastic in“Something Rotten!”

And in “On Your Feet!” — which is on tour and on stage at Playhouse Square — the punctuation is a demand that the audience breach theater protocol and get up and dance in the aisles.

No encouragement is necessary, for this biographical jukebox musical consists largely of Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s high-energy hits from the 1980s and ’90s, performed by superb entertainers under Jerry Mitchell’s direction. They are backed by an incredible on-stage band with plenty of brass and percussion, with Clay Ostwald on the keyboards and at the helm.

Unfortunately, all this music is wrapped in Alexander Dinelaris’ lightweight narrative that tracks the limited dramatic arc of Gloria’s and husband/producer Emilio’s life.