The new Gloria Estafan stage musical, On Your Feet! premiered in Chicago last night, and Variety likes what it sees.
While not an absolute rave, Variety says the show is what you expect and achieves that well.
Just a few lines from the positive review:
There is something comfortingly familiar and predictable about “On Your Feet!,” the Broadway-bound new bio-musical featuring the story of Gloria Estefan and her music-producer husband Emilio.
Another way to say that might be that it never goes deeper than the superficial and that its narrative follows a TV-movie template.
But the show boasts sufficient sincerity with its schmaltz, and features a fluid, structurally sound story that strings together the Estefans’ pop ballads with a ready dose of the buoyant Cuban-fusion dance numbers that sold kajillions of albums worldwide.
It’s a show sure to please the built-in audience that will find absolutely exactly the entertainment they expect, and even the less fully acquainted will find that the rhythm really is going to get you.
It’s corny, stereotypical, too on-the-nose… and it works, which is true throughout this unsubtle but ever-crafty and unquestionably entertaining show.
Directed by two time Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell, the show plays in Chicago through July 5th, and is then set for a Broadway opening night on November 5th at the Marquis Theater in NYC.
More info at the show's official website here.
