There’s an art to making music. 

Obviously, STEVEN, tell us something we don’t know.

No, I mean, there’s an art to the drama of watching a band make music. And even though almost every musical has a band somewhere around the stage, and even with the preponderance of biographical jukebox musicals about the careers of our musical luminaries, how many shows actually focus on depicting the act and the process of making music?

Scant few! 

Which might be why the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Buena Vista Social Club is at its best when in the recording studio with the real band on stage (more productions should consider leaving their orchestras in plain sight, as at City Center (Encores!) and Classic Stage Company).

Granted, Playwrights Horizons’ Stereophonic is basically these sequences from Buena Vista, but for the entirety of its 3-hour duration, all set in a recording studio with a band; “the art of making music” doubles as the logline of the whole play.