I am currently editing a novel that has taken much longer than expected to edit. So a musical about trying to finish a musical is both entirely on point, and perhaps something I am not in the best place to analyze.
Aguardiente is primarily in Spanish. I do speak some Spanish, but not enough to keep up with a musical. There were captions, so I was following along quite well, but when a few people cracked up at one character's name, I realized I had missed something. (I figured it out.) All of this is to say I have thoughts about the show. But I am aware that things that didn't quite seem clear to me may well be a cultural skill issue on my part, and less a fault of the show.
This is a lot of setup to say I had a great time. Aguardiente is about two writers trying to finish a show about Latinx people, dealing with funding issues, competing requests for time and story ideas. And in the shower within the show Azuquita and Anis eventually decide leave their small town for New York where they have different experiences, and ultimately make different choices about what the city has taught them.
There are references to pop songs, to arts funding cuts, especially for shows about people speaking Spanish, and TikTok trends. There were a ton of songs, a huge number of costume changes (I counted six separate costumes for the ensemble and they charge into and out of them multiple times. The main characters had about four each.) The dancing was incredible.
Sometimes with musicals there's a weird sense of time. When you spend three minutes on one big feeling in song, you skip through and jump cut ahead a lot to get through the rest of the plot.
But I had a great time. And I loved the themes even if the themes of how hard it is to write in the current times was maybe very timely.
Also, show out to the Dinner and a Show Newsletter that highlighted this show. It had fallen off my radar, despite being at my closest theater.