Never mind the dated lingo, the choreography sings and the themes resonate
When West Side Story opened on Broadway, Eisenhower was starting his second term and our only satellite was the moon.
When West Side Story opened on Broadway, Dwight Eisenhower was starting his second term in office and Earth’s only satellite was the moon. (Sputnik 1 was launched the following Friday.)
A couple of weeks before the production closed, Ike took part in the groundbreaking ceremony at the Lincoln Centre that was part of the “slum clearance” transformation of Manhattan’s Upper West Side where Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein’s cutting-edge musical was set — and from where 7000 black and Hispanic families had been evicted.
The lingo may have dated badly (especially the writers’ own coinages: “sperm the worm” anyone?) but the story’s tribalism and racial violence are still depressingly, even resurgently, current.
This is a hard-edged revival, faithful to the original but rather blunter, especially in its treatment of a key scene.
A stylised sexual assault — which is typically performed as a mock rape (the threat is enough to make the point to the woman, isolated from her friends, as well as to audiences) — is played for real here. And it makes a reconciliation between the warring gangs impossible.
It’s also extra jarring as the gang fighting is otherwise left stylised: the only kicks are battements and the combatants arrive like elegant firebirds.
Other key parts of the original production have dated surprisingly well, perhaps none better than Robbins’s choreography.
Aside from the ridiculous first fight duet — which will be familiar to anyone who has seen the 1961 screen adaptation and appears here verbatim — the dance is stylish and breezily modern. It’s also impeccably performed.
Bernstein’s blustery music — with its jousting brass and string sections — is thrilling and vibrant thanks to Orchestra Victoria and conductor Donald Chan.
Its only flaws stem from Bernstein’s inability to scale the story’s tragic peaks.
There are, however, moments of genius in which orchestra and voice manage to show excitement while they’re generating it, most notably Tony (Todd Jacobsson) in Something’s Coming and Anita (Chloe Zuel) in A Boy Like That.
The mid-range casting is excellent. Zuel is a powerful presence as Anita. Lyndon Watts is an outstanding Bernardo, especially in the air.
Zoe Ioannou is precise and clever as Rosalia. Noah Mullins is a rock-solid Riff.
But Jacobsson was exposed in his duets with co-lead Sophie Salvesani (Maria), whose coloratura soprano rang out like a set of accusative tuning forks.
However, it is the maddeningly likeable ensembles — the Shark girls’ America, the butt-clutching dance at the gym and the white ballet at the start of the second act that climaxes with 20 singing Somewhere — that will stick in your head.
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