On Your Feet!
Opening Night: November 5, 2015
Closing: August 20, 2017
Theater: Marquis Theatre
“On Your Feet!” is the story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan, two people who believed in their talent, their music and each other, and became an international sensation. Get ready to get on your feet, and dance to the smash hits “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,” “1-2-3,” “Live For Loving You,” “Conga,” and many more.
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November 6, 2015
“On Your Feet!” is bringing fun back to Broadway — finally! Miserable affairs, angsty German teens and sad-sack British royals — in shows like “Thérèse Raquin,” “Spring Awakening” and “King Charles III” — have made the season a dour one. Even the blockbuster “Hamilton” ends on a melancholy note. So it’s a pleasure to welcome “On Your Feet!,” the rare show that earns its exclamation mark. Inspired by the life and music of Gloria and Emilio Estefan, it literally gets the audience off its seats and into a conga line. Corny? You bet. This biographical jukebox musical packages every showbiz cliché — rags to riches, tragedy and triumphs — between hits like “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and “1-2-3.” If you have a weakness for sultry singers in leather chaps and bedazzled toreador pants, so much the better.
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November 5, 2015
The recipe may be familiar, but the flavor is fresh in “On Your Feet!,” the half-formulaic, half-original and undeniably crowd-pleasing musical about the lives of Emilio and Gloria Estefan that opened on Thursday at the Marquis Theater. To cite the most unusual element: Many a musical could be described as a car crash, but I can’t think of any in which such a calamity figures as a dramatic turning point. Still, it’s no spoiler to say that the show includes the accident that threatened Ms. Estefan’s life and might have ended her career. Fans of hers will recall that 1990 incident, which darkens the second act and brings some gravity to this mostly flashy, salsa-splashed show.
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November 5, 2015
I’m no fan of jukebox musicals. If they’re the type that tell an invented tale, like “Mamma Mia!” or “Rock of Ages,” the book is generally rendered idiotic by the effort to accommodate the songs. If they’re instead pop biographies, like “Jersey Boys” and “Beautiful,” the problem is even worse because the songs, too, are denatured, by the effort to accommodate a preexisting storyline. Furthermore, the structure of musicals in the second category can only lead to a bathetic climax: In the final scenes, the protagonists (Frankie Valli, Carole King) become exactly who we already knew them to be. That’s more than ever the case with the new Gloria Estefan jukebox musical “On Your Feet!” because if you don’t arrive at the Marquis Theatre knowing the billboard headlines of her story (Cuban immigrant becomes American pop star, gets hit by a truck, eventually returns in triumph) why are you there? The only real issues for me in approaching a show like this are the fun of the tunes and the ingenuity of the distraction. To say that “On Your Feet!” is better than most of its ilk is therefore faint praise; it means you might have almost as good a time as you would if it were merely a concert.
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November 5, 2015
If the producers of “On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan” know what’s good for them (odds are, they do), they’re ad-bombing Spanish-language media outlets and pitching group sales 24/7. That’s the way to go with a surefire audience pleaser like this jukebox musical built around the life and career of Cuban-American superstar Gloria Estefan. Newcomer Ana Villafane (who originated the role in the show’s Chicago premiere) is a knockout in the leading role, the dazzling centerpiece of this flashy, splashy spectacle helmed by Jerry Mitchell.
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November 5, 2015
A star is born with “On Your Feet!” — the latest Broadway jukebox musical and one that, opening on the eve of Donald Trump’s Saturday Night Live gig couldn’t be timelier. A biotuner scripted by Alexander Dinelaris (a playwright and one of the three writers on “Birdman”), “On Your Feet!” at the Marquis Theatre tells the story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan, children of Cuban immigrants who met, married and built the Miami Sound Machine into a global hitmonster that crossed the rigid boundaries — riding the hyphen, as they used to say — of the pop charts around the world.
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November 5, 2015
There’s not much to dislike about “On Your Feet!,” because there’s not much about it to inspire reaction of any kind. A serviceable jukebox musical about Cuban-American recording star Gloria Estefan (Ana Villafañe) and her husband, Emilio (Josh Segarra), the show starts at what may be an insurmountable disadvantage: Neither Estefan nor her life nor her music are especially dramatically interesting. This is the story of a sensible, talented, hard-working woman in a happy marriage who made successful professional dance pop. Opera it is not.
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