IN THE HEIGHTS is an oft-told tale, sort of a cross between CANDIDE and WAITING FOR GODOT, except with a lot of song and dance in the salsa fashion.

The heights in question is the Manhattan neighborhood known as Washington Heights, north of Harlem and nearly outta town, where Puerto Ricans are the latest dominant immigrant culture.

But that’s changing, what with gentrifying urban sprawl threatening both buildings and the people in them. The play is a slice of their lives.

In The Heights at Civic Theater.

^{Courtesy photo}

A Broadway prize-winner two seasons ago for Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes, HEIGHTS is at the Civic Theatre this week on its first national tour.

It’s a strenuous show, kept endlessly in motion by Thomas Kail’s overheated direction and liable to burst into song and Andy Blankenbuehler’s dances whatever happens, happy or sad. (Oddly enough, despite the friction of restless strivers on hot summer pavement, there’s never any sense of menace.)

Several stories overlap and none are really resolved. Some people quit and others choose to hang on. Lovers get together but maybe not forever. There’s a sad death, a winning lottery ticket and a brutal on-going electrical blackout.

And hovering over it all like a spiritual ozone layer is the driving ambition that has made a nation of immigrants so splendid and powerful.

The central character, played by songwriter Miranda himself on Broadway, is a Dominican Republic orphan who runs the corner bodega. His name is Usnavi, pronounced oos-nah-vee, and he confesses that his parents chose it from the sign painted on the ship they saw when coming into New York Harbor for the first time.

Joseph Morales plays the role with such an appealing mixture of grit, self-deprecation and good will that his skill as a singer (when he gets out of the hip-hop desert) surprises.

Arielle Jacobs thoroughly convinces as the neighborhood girl who has lost her scholarship to Stanford because she had to work to jobs to “buy books I was too tired to read.” Danny Bolero and Natalie Toro slowly establish her parents as both exhilarated and exhausted at boosting their child so high but Rogelio Douglas Jr. as their sole black employee and the one the girl falls for, is only conventionally stalwart.

Rayanne Gonzales sketches a dear old soul as Abuela (Grandmother) Claudia, the neighborhood matriarch, and she sings with surprising power “Paciencia y Fe” (“Patience and Faith”), one of the several female anthems here.

Miss Toro has another in “Enough,” ripping out family cobwebs, and Isabelle Santiago, the beautician who’s closing shop, heads one in “Carnaval del Barrio.”

Justin Mendoza leads the really tight traveling band, which features wicked licks by trumpeter Paul Baron and Tim Jensen doubling on seven reed instruments. (No bassoon?)

The Anna Louizos set – towering tenements heavy with texture and a background featuring one end of the George Washington Bridge – almost overwhelms the show beneath it, which may explains the urgency of the staging. Paul Tazewell’s flavorful costuming looks both flattering and really comfortable and Howell Binkley often uses his lighting design – dim is the default – as part of the choreography.

This is a large shaggy show, eager to please and impress, powered by the endless roil of Manhattan survivors and serving as a dandy celebration of the traditional melting pot that is America.

DOWNLOAD CASTLIST HERE

DOWNLOAD SONGS HERE

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE