Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club is a new musical about a circle of Cuban musicians and the album that brought them back together decades after their prime. At its center is the singer Omara Portuondo. Years have passed since her last recording, she has stepped away from public life, and a young record producer's offer of a new album forces her to face what she left behind. The idea the show keeps returning to is the second chance.

The songs are existing Cuban numbers in the son, danzón and bolero traditions, mostly from the 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club. A band plays them on stage and they are sung in Spanish, while the scenes are in English. Marco Ramirez wrote the book, Saheem Ali developed and directed the production, and Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck share the choreography credit.

The musical began Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company in 2023 and opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on March 19, 2025. It won four competitive Tony Awards in 2025, plus a Special Tony Award for its band, and its Broadway cast album later won a Grammy.

The plot moves between two periods in Havana. One is the 1990s, long after the city's social clubs have shut and their musicians have drifted apart. The other is the 1950s, when the same people were young performers. Several characters are played by two actors, one younger and one older, and at times both versions are on stage together.

In the earlier timeline, young Omara gives up a steady job at the Tropicana for the rawer music being played at the Buena Vista Social Club, and the people she meets there reshape her life. Her older sister, Haydee, is part of this world too; in real life, Omara followed Haydee into the Tropicana's dance troupe in 1950. The 1959 revolution and Fidel Castro's rise to power then leave a mark on all of them.

In the later timeline, the offer to record arrives decades after the club years, and before Omara can sing again she has to reconnect with old friends after a long stretch of loss. Juan de Marcos, the musician rounding up the players, is a central figure here; Ramirez has described the story as Juan going door to door with a week to make a record. Everything builds toward the 1996 Havana sessions that became the album.

Apart from Omara, the main characters are the real players behind that record: Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Compay Segundo and Eliades Ochoa, along with Juan de Marcos González. The cast list also includes a Narrator. Ramirez has acknowledged taking liberties: to sharpen the underdog angle, he made some of the musicians more obscure in old age than they really were.

The official billing credits the music simply to Buena Vista Social Club. There is no original score: the songs come mostly from the 1997 album, with some reportedly drawn from solo records its members made later.

Marco Paguia adapted the songs for the stage. He wrote the orchestrations and arrangements, is the music director and plays piano in the band. Javier Díaz and David Oquendo, who play percussion and guitar in the band, contributed additional arrangements. The band's lineup covers piano, guitar, bass, woodwinds, trumpet, trombone and three percussionists, with alternates on tres and cuatro.

The song list runs to a dozen numbers in Act One and nine in Act Two, and several of them return later in the evening. A few to listen for:

• "El Carretero" opens the show.
• "Lágrimas Negras" is heard first as a prelude near the top of Act One and returns in Act Two.
• "Dos Gardenias" closes the first act and comes back as a reprise in the second.
• "El Cuarto de Tula" starts Act Two.
• "Silencio" is sung in the second act and returns near the end as an instrumental.
• "Candela" first appears in Act One, and its reprise closes the song list.

The band is part of the stage picture. The musicians play in full view rather than from a pit, some characters play instruments, and a few band members reportedly have lines in certain scenes.

The choreography, which has won several awards, blends modern dance with Cuban social dance. With little film footage of the real club's gatherings to go on, Delgado and Peck largely had to imagine how people moved there.

As of October 2026, Gina Torres has stepped in as Omara for a run from October 13 through November 29, 2026, while Natalie Venetia Belcon, who won a Tony Award in the role, is on leave to appear in In the Heights at a New York City Center gala. The company also includes Rick Negron (Compay), Mel Semé (Ibrahim), Jainardo Batista Sterling (Rubén), Renesito Avich (Eliades) and Chris Myers (Juan de Marcos), with Isa Antonetti, Da'Von T. Moody, Wesley Wray, Jesús Pupo and Ashley De La Rosa as the younger Omara, Compay, Ibrahim, Rubén and Haydee. Swing Tanairi Sade Vazquez is scheduled to play Young Haydee from October 27 to November 15 while De La Rosa is on leave.

As of October 2026, José "Candelita" Iglesias, a former MLB infielder and Latin pop singer, plays the Narrator at Wednesday evening through Sunday performances; he joined on August 27, 2026, and has extended his run through November 15. Bernie Williams, the former New York Yankees center fielder who also plays jazz guitar, is scheduled to play guitar with the band from October 22 to November 29, and Xolo Maridueña is set to make his Broadway debut as Juan de Marcos from November 17, 2026, to January 3, 2027.

The record behind the musical was made in seven days in March 1996 at the EGREM studios in Havana, with Ry Cooder producing and Juan de Marcos González leading the ensemble. World Circuit released it on June 23, 1997. It won the Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album in 1998, and Wim Wenders's 1999 documentary about the musicians was nominated for an Academy Award. In 2022 the album entered the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, the same year Guinness World Records named it the top-selling world music album.

The stage version was Orin Wolf's idea, reportedly dating to 2017. Nick Gold, who controlled the stage rights, was cautious at first and came around after Wolf invited him to see The Band's Visit. Over more than two years Wolf made about six trips to Cuba, some with Yazbek, largely to promise the surviving players and their relatives a stake in the show: under his deal, the real people portrayed, or their families, share in the royalties. On a 2019 trip to Havana, members of the creative team reportedly tracked down the original club's building and found it had become a gym. An official video series, The Road to Broadway, follows the team to Cuba to meet Juan de Marcos González, Eliades Ochoa, Barbarito Torres, Amadito Valdés and Omara Portuondo.

The world premiere took place at Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, where performances began on November 17, 2023, and the official opening followed on December 13. The run was extended more than once and closed on January 28, 2024. Previews at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre began on February 21, 2025, and opening night was March 19, 2025. World Circuit released the Original Broadway Cast Recording on June 6, 2025, with Paguia, Sharenow and Yazbek as its producers.

A North American tour opened at Shea's Buffalo Theatre in Buffalo, New York, playing September 12 to 19, 2026, with Karmine Alers as Omara; its later stops include Miami, Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles. In June 2026, Wolf said the musical was planned for London's West End in 2027, with no venue or dates set at the time.