Review of Buena Vista Social Club on Broadway

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I’ve worked at an Off-Off-Broadway space for about five years now, but because I don’t live in New York City (god, I wish I could own a nice brownstone in the city, but we’re never probably getting to that point), my interactions with the theatre world can be quite limited. However, when I do come up to New York, I try to get as many theatre tickets as I can.

For this trip, in August 2025, it was a bit last minute so I waited to buy the tickets for shows. I was waiting to see if I landed a job by then, as I was unexpectedly unemployed for a while, but I didn’t! I did end up finding one but was scheduled to start in late August 2025, so this was my last venture around the city for a while.

This ticket for Buena Vista Social Club was inspired by their Tony Award performance. I had already kind of known about this show existing before that moment, but had never encountered any of their advertising and I honestly didn’t really know what it was about. I had a lot of other shows to see high on my list for this past theatrical season, and I just never looked this one.

But man: that Tony Award performance really sold me. I was not aware of the actual Buena Vista Social Club—in fact, my knowledge of Latin American and Caribbean music is really poor. I don’t listen to music often as much as I used to, and when I do it tends to be from Asia (i.e. I’ve been really into 1950s/1960s Indonesian music). I do want to expand my horizons in the near future though.

I purchased a partial view seat because the tickets for this show were a little pricy after the Tonys, which I kind of expected. I picked out C 23 in the mezzanine, which wasn’t bad at all. You only miss the events happening in the far left, and most of the staging is central. Only one little moment you miss of dialogue, but I found what I paid for this seat to be more than enough.

Let’s get into the review! I’m rambling already.

Weaving past and present, the story of Omara Portuondo and the Buena Vista Social Club.

Something to note about this production upfront, before we get any further, is that the music contained with this show is the actual music the Buena Vista Social Club performed and recorded. That means the dialogue is in English, but the actual songs are completely in Spanish. The show provided with the Playbill a little booklet explaining each of the songs, as there is an incredible amount of meaning packed into them.

Anyways: the world of this musical bounces back and forth between past and present. In the present day, a double PhD student, tired of studying the Western classical composers, wants to put together a project where he shows the world that Cuban music matters too. He gets funding to make a recording, and he wants Omara Portuondo involved with the recording because of how influential she was (and still is).

She’s reluctant and has given up singing years prior; we learn her story through the moments set in the past. Each scene tends to switch off between the two, and in the past scenes, we meet her sister and her. They are a singing and dancing combo on the uppity side of town before the Cuban Revolution, and the American record companies, specifically Capitol Records, wants to potentially sign them on.

But when Omara finds herself curious about the “rougher” side of town due to a talented pianist and guitarist who they perform with one night, she stumbles into the Buena Vista Social Club. It’s a Black club (social clubs in Cuba, as I learned afterward, were segregated), and when she sees the busboy Ibrahim sing some melodies, she’s in love with the club (and later him).

Despite her sister’s wishes, she’s drawn to the club again and again. This falls on the shadow of the Cuban Revolution, and we do see the impacts of that later on in the musical. Back in the present day though, Omora is a force still to be reckoned with, but as another character warns, the songs she sings will bring back memories she has kept contained for a while now.

There’s a live band performing on the stage and singing along with the actors, and we definitely get a lot of moments to see them shine. The actual musical itself has scenes where it acknowledges them and their performances, which was such a neat little touch. The actors that also do intricate dances are incredible; everyone around me was raving out how well they were doing the Cuban dances on that stage.

I will say: one of the most memorable lines, and there are a few, is how one character describes how in Cuba, there used to be so many different kinds of people. Pickpockets, poets, laborers. Everyone congregated in the streets and knew each other. But after the revolution, Cubans became one of two groups: the ones who stayed, or the ones who left. As a diaspora kid from a country like this, I really felt that one in my heart.

Overall Thoughts

I adored the performances in this production, and I can see why Natalie Venetia Belcon nabbed the Tony Award during this theatre season specifically. She plays a powerful but haunted woman in such a striking way, and I was really impressed with her and the actress who portrayed her younger self.

For me, the strength in this production really lies in the performances and how they bring the world of this musical alive. I was surrounded by Latinx and Cuban people, judging from some conversations I was hearing, and I could hear some people humming the opening bars to certain songs or whispering the lyrics here and there under their breath.

However, I did find the book a little weak. For those who don’t know what I’m saying—the narrative story tying all of this together could’ve been better. It’s really hard to take already-made songs and create a comprehensive book, and I think they did a good job, but it wasn’t super compelling to me story-wise.

I do definitely recommend this show though! It’s a lot of fun, and I did come out of it wanting to learn more about Cuban artistry, dance, and folk songs. I also went home and learned more about racial tensions in Cuba during this time, as this is a subject I’ve never studied before. In graduate school I studied the Caribbean and race in certain courses, but I never recall anything being mentioned about Cuba.

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