Brittany Ann Photography

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda put Hamilton — as in Alexander — behind a microphone, he turned a spotlight on New York City with a play about Washington Heights, a multiracial, working-class neighborhood where Miranda spent parts of his youth. In the Heights was Miranda’s first Broadway musical and a winner of four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, years before Hamilton turned Miranda into a star.

With music and lyrics by Miranda and a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, In The Heights was a tale in two acts where dreams, family obligations, immigrant life and the meaning of home collide over the course of a few sweltering summer days. Its score mixed hip-hop and Broadway with Latin musical traditions in songs such as “96,000,” “Paciencia y Fe” and “Carnaval del Barrio,” in a story centering a largely Hispanic community.

For its 74th season, the Lake Worth Playhouse’s production of In the Heights brings to life that block, and all its music, movement and complicated ideas about belonging. The production also features a South Florida cast whose own Puerto Rican, Dominican and Latin American backgrounds sometimes intersect with those of the characters onstage.

“For the summertime, I want to capture a younger audience and the non-theatergoing crowd with something high-energy,” Lake Worth Playhouse Artistic Director Daniel Eilola tells PureHoney. “Catering to that, this story, specifically with its sense of community and its message, is important right now to our entire community with all the things out there that are trying to pull us apart.”

For Eilola, who moved to South Florida from Philadelphia 15 years ago and has worked at the Playhouse for 12, this production stands out. “The sheer joy that I see from this cast and crew putting the show together gives you hope,’” he says.

Presenting a show that asks what makes a place home has Eilola thinking about the Playhouse as a community. “There’s magic in the beams in this theater,” he says. “it’s a kind of tone that we try to set and try to maintain and uphold, where we open our doors and welcome everybody.”

The Lake Worth Playhouse presents In The Heights through Sunday, August 2. lakeworthplayhouse.org ~ Abel Folgar