STAGE WEST: "La Havana Madrid" at New Village Arts Theatre

Michelle Caravia flanked by (holding flags) Lena Ceja, left, and Alyssa Rodriguez in "La Havana Madrid."                                                                                                                             Photo by Tanya Perez

            If you go to 959. W. Belmont Avenue near Sheffield on Chicago’s North Side you’ll find a hair salon there called Milio’s. Big deal, you say.
            But if the walls of that hair salon could talk …
            Or play music.
            That address once belonged to a nightclub that in the 1960s and early ‘70s was a haven for immigrants newly arrived in America from Cuba, Colombia and Puerto Rico. It was called La Havana Madrid.
            The legacy of that beloved nightspot is celebrated in Sandra Delgado’s play with music, also titled “La Havana Madrid.” Tripling up, La Havana Madrid is also the name of the emcee in this engaging show that based on true stories melds music and history.
            Delgado also wrote the Spanish lyrics for the songs in “La Havana Madrid, which were composed by Cristian Amigo. And in 2023 at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, she also portrayed that glamorous singing emcee in its two-act production.
            At New Village Arts in Carlsbad, Richard Trujillo directs a staging of “La Havana Madrid” that runs through April 27. It features Michelle Caravia in the title role, and it’s her rangy, passionate vocals that are at the center of this pleasing production of Delgado’s show.
            The smallish stage at NVA allows the theater to feel more like a club or cabaret than “La Havana Madrid” might in a larger house. (“La Havana Madrid” world-premiered in 2016, fittingly at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.) But here’s the most welcome development: New Village’s production includes a live band onstage, playing behind a sheer drapery and led by bassist Carlos Odiano, who also gets to be part of the story at times. The group features MC Green on guitar, Joe Aportela on percussion, Carson Inouye on keyboards and Gabriella Hendricks on horns.
            The only disappointment of NVA’s exceptional production last year of “The Color Purple” musical was that it was presented without live musicians. “La Havana Madrid” truly demands a band in the mix – how can you reproduce a red-hot cabaret with recorded music? The ensemble here is lively and tight and conversant with the varied musical styles represented in Amigo’s set list.
            Those songs are interwoven among vignettes about the immigrants from afar who’d settled in Chicago neighborhoods during this dynamic time period – from the “Peter Pan Kids” who fled Cuba to escape the Castro regime to the Puerto Ricans who longed to embrace a home away from home.
            The storytellers are the “La Havana Madrid” cast members: Lena Ceja, Fredy Gomez Cruz, Alyssa Rodriguez, Leonardo Romero and Jawann McBeth.
            Ceja, the Natasha of Cygnet Theatre’s unforgettable “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” last year, is featured in two of the NVA show’s sequences – one a charming meet-cute with Romero, the other a more incendiary turn in Act Two, the more serious and thoughtful half of “La Havana Madrid.”
            Because for all the good times had and joy expressed in that Chicago club many who frequented it found life in their new American home at best difficult to assimilate into and at worst unfriendly, hostile and even violent. This is where the currency of Delgado’s play stands out: Sixty years later immigrants are still being chased down, harassed or detained in this Land of the Free.
            Projections (designed by Michael Wogulis) visually dramatize the history unfolding around the heyday of La Havana Madrid, depicting the Chicago that once was but also the faces of those who struggled to be part of its neighborhoods and to live in peace.
            The combining of music, dance and historical storytelling isn’t always seamless in “La Havana Madrid.” Just as the soulful music and the choreography (by Lilea Alvarez and Tamara Rodriguez) take us away, it’s back to exposition. I didn’t want a sung-through “La Havana Madrid,” but the more music, especially given the presence of a live band, the better.
            I will say this: After seeing “La Havana Madrid” I am more curious, more inclined to know what it was like at the Belmont & Sheffield of the past and to know who found escape and an embrace of home there.
            “La Havana Madrid” runs through April 27 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad.