Stage lights slowly fade up from complete black to a dimly lit spotlight. It falls on a graffiti painter performing a hip hop routine to Latin music, as he vandalizes what appears to be the shopfront of a bodega.

After an eight-count beat, the play opens with a line spoken by the protagonist, “Lights up, on Washington Heights.” One is immediately transported to the vivacious and vibrant Latino community of Washington Heights in New York.   

I attended the Saturday night showing of “In the Heights” at Kaimuki High School.

The two-story set was impressive, with authentic-looking graffiti on the walls and bags of potato chips in the bodega shop window.

Accompanied by a real orchestra, the cast of 29 students from Hawaii public schools brought vivacity to the work by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Directed by Michael Ng and choreographed by M.J. Matsushita, the show revolves around two days in the life of a neighborhood and its residents in Washington Heights.

The protagonist of the story is Usnavi De La Vega, who is comedically named after a U.S. Navy ship seen by American immigrants. Usnavi is an industrious, sociable twenty-something who works at the family bodega, or shop, with his younger and socially-aware cousin.  

It is revealed that Usnavi’s parents died when he was young, and he was left to live with Abuela Claudia. She is not his consanguineal grandmother but rather the neighborhood matriarch.  

Other characters in the story include Nina, a studious first-year Stanford student and the first in her family and neighborhood to go to college; her parents Kevin and Camila Rosario, who run a cab company; Vanessa, a dauntless young Latina, who works at the local salon and is Usnavi’s love interest; and Benny, one of the few non-Latinos in the neighborhood, who works for Kevin  and is also enamored with Kevin’s daughter, Nina.