In The Heights at Home

It's no secret that the Theatre Scene isn't impressed with Rod Hagwood's reviewing style.  But when he's "just" reporting, he's quite a good read, as evidenced by last week's story about the homecoming for the cast of many people involved with In the Heights.

“[South Florida] is a very fruitful breeding ground for artists with Hispanic backgrounds,” Lacamoire said. “But the show is not an inside joke. People who don’t speak Spanish will get it. ‘In the Heights’ is really about family. But I do think Floridians will be getting the show on another level. You’ll see characters in the show you see in South Florida, whether you’re going to the hair salon or the mechanic.”

We missed the story last week because the Sun-Sentinel inexplicably had it hidden away in the Fashion section.  OK, that's probably because Hagwood is the fashion editor for the paper, but fashion isn't mentioned anywhere in the story, it obviously belongs in the theatre section.  It's a shame that it took over a week for management to recognize something so obvious to the reader.

Hagwood should drop his condescending tone and sentence fragment openings from his reviews and adopt this much cleaner, open and informative voice.  We'd all be better for it.