“Buena Vista Social Club” at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

Buena Vista Social Club comes alive through music. No surprise there. The compact and charming new show – now on Broadway after a run last winter at the Atlantic Theater Company – chronicles the preservation of a performance culture that flourished in Havana’s underground clubs prior to Cuba’s communist revolution. The score, familiar to some and new to others, transports the audience back across decades, as the characters themselves traverse the ocean of time that separates their lives as young musicians and their current status as artistic eminences. Conceived for the stage by Saheem Ali and Marco Ramirez, the musical honors the rich story first captured in the late-nineties concept album and documentary that inspired its creation.

Ali and Ramirez don’t simply put that footage onstage. The action has been translated to a somewhat familiar theatrical structure, with mostly satisfying results. Ramirez’s libretto toggles between 1956, when Cuba’s clubs were divided between swanky joints that catered to the white tourist trade and social clubs where predominantly dark-skinned Cubans sang traditional music, and 1996, when the enterprising producer and musicologist Juan de Marcos (Justin Cunningham) traveled to Havana with the idea of introducing the world to son cubano and danzón.

The drama in both eras centers on Omara Portuondo, who emerges as the guiding voice in this musical revolution. In the fifties, Young Omara (Isa Antonetti) feels the call of her country’s music, even as she enjoys a stable job singing at the Tropicana resort with her disapproving sister, Haydee (Ashley De La Rosa). Choosing to stay in Cuba after Castro takes power, the second frame involves Juan attempting to convince the aging Omara (Natalie Venetia Belcon) to end a self-imposed retirement and return to the studio.

The latter scenario proves particularly compelling, especially with Belcon’s striking presence center stage. Grandly costumed by Dede Ayite, Belcon moves easily between the position of an imperious eminence to a woman once again caught in the sway of singing, after hearing with fresh ears the music that changed her life. Belcon plays Omara’s conflicted nature with a moving subtlety, especially upon reuniting with her fellow compatriots in the bygone era: Compay Segundo (Julio Monge), Rubén Gonzalez (Jainardo Batista Sterling), and Ibrahim Ferrer (the superb Mel Semé).

The onstage musicians and actors capture the joyful ebullience of making music again, and choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck translate the vibrant memory world of the 1950s social club to the 1990s recording studio with ease. (Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design effortlessly limns both periods while also evoking Havana’s timeless architecture.) Although the music and the movement are clearly rehearsed, the performance masterfully conveys a spirit of improvisation, as though these collaborators, separated by time and circumstance, simply picked up right where they left off.

Although Ali’s direction fluidly moves between the two frames and holds the audience’s attention, the 1950s backstory occasionally feels a touch too predictable, hewing to familiar theatrical tropes. Despite a committed performance by Antonetti as Young Omara – and Belcon’s superb work picking up the emotional thread later on – the character’s journey seems telegraphed as a foregone conclusion. There is a sense in these moments that Ramirez’s book exists largely to transfer the action from one musical sequence to another, without its own legs to stand on. Such a quibble seems minor, however, when the music starts to play – especially when the energy of discovering (or rediscovering) familiar songs like “Candela” and “Chan Chan” overtakes the audience.

It’s no spoiler to say that Buena Vista Social Club, like the documentary that inspired it, ends with a performance at Carnegie Hall. Why, Juan ponders, shouldn’t this music hold space in the same auditorium designed for performances of Mozart or Rachmaninov? And why shouldn’t it now be heard a few blocks south, eight times a week?