In the Heights - Original Broadway Cast Recording

All shows lose something when they become original-cast CDs, no matter how original the material and how cast-iron-solid the cast. But with strong enough stuff and powerful enough performances, you're not that aware of diminishment. It's like the weather: 95 degrees is not that much less canicular than 100.

Not quite so with the two-disc original-cast CD of In the Heights. Here the subtraction is rather more palpable. We are minus Anna Louizos' sublime set: Washington Heights and the George Washington Bridge summoned up in breathtaking detail, and color even more riotous than the real thing—an art show unto itself.

It is also minus Paul Tazewell's costumes, a compelling compendium of Latino chic, and Howell Binkley's lighting, which contributes fireworks—and not only in the fetching Fourth of July number of the same name. Then add—or, rather, subtract—the savvy direction of Thomas Kail, and the mesmerizing, near-perpetual-motion choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler. After so much subtraction, you may wonder what is left.

Actually, quite a bit. With music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, In the Heights still has some tricks up its sleeve—or, rather, jewel box. Loss from the total is not total loss.

[IMG:R]Let's start with the music. It's an anthology of almost every known Latino dance rhythm, every drum-beating and heart-pounding Hispanic beat. The difference is that the aural-visual dance shifts to the auditory alone, but still arouses that titillation in your feet as Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman's arrangements and orchestrations continue to tickle the ear and the mind.

Miranda's lyrics are a mixed marriage of the inventive and the expectable. Often repetitively basic, they can suddenly switch to the cunningly surprising, as in "hypotheticals" rhyming with "set of goals," which sings better than it reads. Or this, about drinks, "As long as you buy 'em/L'chaim!" The latter brings us to another ingratiating quality of the show: its melting-pot mix. It embraces sundry minorities: Dominicans and Cubans, Hispanics and blacks, funky women as much as macho men, and that "L'chaim!"

Moreover, it's a bit of a learning experience. In the Heights has lively macaronic dialogue, peppered with Spanish phrases—not Spanglish, but the genuine article. A love duet, "Sunrise," is, in fact, a Spanish lesson, with Hispanic Nina testing and extending the Spanish of Benny, her black lover. Though not mandatory, you may want to have a Spanish dictionary to hand, and so prepare for such international travel as, say, to Miami.

There is a helpful synopsis that enables you to follow the story, although the too cute book is the most expendable part of the show. The compensations come in listening to fine singing by Olga Merediz and Priscilla Lopez, to name only two who come across winningly, as does Lacamoire's brisk conducting of his idiomatic musicians.

One thing, though, hurts. I truly missed the long-legged sexiness and award-winning dancing of beautiful Karen Olivo, which is like the olive in your martini. But then, this is more of a cuba libre, which manages without an olive.

John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News.