REVIVAL! “West Side Story” on Broadway
Ta-da-da-da-daaa *snap snap* Ta-da-da-da-daaa…
In the moment the light’s dim in the theater, the stage transforms. It goes from dark curtained platform to New York City’s tenements in the 1950s. A group of young men fill the stage in a precisely choreographed streetwise ballet to illustrate growing frustrations in their neighborhood. Tensions are rising between two gangs, the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks.
So begins the Broadway revival of the much beloved musical, “West Side Story”. The story’s core is Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but the outcome here is all New York. The rival gangs lay claim to the streets in their neighborhood. It is 1957, so you can toss your political correctness out on your way into the theater. The Jets will call their enemies Spics and wetbacks and the Sharks will call them crackers and ‘cabrones.’ Everyone in the neighborhood takes offense, but no one aims to change. Turf wars are the only things that matter. The Jets protect their streets with a sense of entitlement and belonging. They’re Americans. The Puerto Rican Sharks protect it with a sense of pride and belonging. They’re new 
Americans and they want to be acknowledged. Both gangs feel they belong more so than the other. Both want the other out. Cultural mixing is unheard of and, if discovered, forcibly discouraged.
Imagine now, your 8th grade dance and the school gymnasium decked out in streamers tossed over the basketball hoop. That’s how the stage is set and the kids flank opposite sides in opposite gangs, dressed in their party best. Except that at this dance, the tension in the room is palpable. While they dance, they fling cheap shots at each other, mocking the other for their attire, accents, dance skills, etc.
Enter one young, naively unbiased Puerto Rican girl named Maria who innocently falls madly in love with one less innocent, reformed American gang member named Tony. What they start tonight will not end well, but they’ve no way of seeing it through their starry, lovesick eyes.
Such is the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers who come from opposite sides of fence. The story is old, but this production is on fire with its new energy. What ties it all into the beloved musical is the music and the lyrics themselves. There is passion and forbidden love and anger and insult and all manner of turmoil in the music and dance and it reverberates with universal feelings of wanting to belong, being far from home and wanting to be loved and accepted or who we are and as we are.
Breaking down the highlights:
In this more authentic version of “West Side Story”, the producers decided to make it realistic by allowing the Spanish characters to speak and sing in Spanish where possible. While I can imagine it was a surprise to some non-Spanish-speaking audience members, you can’t take away the reality that allowing this made for a more believable story. Spanish talk and song was relegated to moments when it was less essential dialogue and more random flying insults from Sharks to Jets. Spanish was also there for the more intimate conversations of the girls of the play, when, for example they’re comparing their homeland to America and when Anita and Maria are discussing the impossible love of Maria and Tony in “A Boy Like That”. So while it was slightly awkward for me to laugh at parts that Joe couldn’t understand, it still gave the musical a touch of authenticity that couldn’t otherwise have been achieved.
Anita. Anita has to get her own props in her own paragraph. The girl who plays her, Karen Olivo, is a fiery and feisty little spitfire, poised enough to fill the enormous shoes left by Academy Award winning Rita Moreno, when she portrayed Anita in the film. Her singing (in Spanish and English) was unnerving, in that way in which a singer is so damn good that you’re literally shaken from within. Her dancing is sexy, classic and perfectly executed. In my opinion, she is the star of this musical. She is the character that most transforms over everyone else. In the two hours you're at the show, Anita becomes like a big sister (to Maria), the hot girlfriend (to Bernardo), one of the girls (to her fellow Latinas), an America-loving woman trying to assimilate, a co-conspirator for Tony and Maria’s plan to be together, a fighter (against the crude advances of the Jets) and a mourner, when she loses her lover. She made the play what it was. When she steps out at the dance, that crazy mop of dark curls framing her face, arriving in that purple, satin flounced dress, she is the center of the universe. All eyes are on her because no one can help it.
In real life, this thespian of Dominican, Puerto Rican and Chinese descent had all the right moves and all the right spices to bring Anita full throttle. Her performance was, by far, my favorite.
Tony and Maria. **Yawn** Sure, they are the center of the play’s storyline, but certainly not the center of its fire. For the most part, you endure their time on stage as a means of getting from point A to point B. For me, the wimpy, idealistic Maria lacks that zesty something that Anita and the other Latina immigrants in their group bring to the story.
Her brother, big, bad Sharks gang leader Bernardo is Mr. Super Hot Sexy Latino Boy. He is the boyfriend of the equally hot and sexy Anita. But he is also just a guy’s guy – a Macho from the word go. He hangs with his boyz (yes, we need a Z for these boyz). They’re as close to brothers as blood on blood. Bernardo is overprotective of Maria, which is expected of the male in Spanish families. Yet, sweet, inexperienced Maria somehow manages to slip by and fall for the one guy that he would never accept simply based on culture and race. It’s comical to watch Bernardo and Maria argue about her Tony in Spanish. It is like watching a Spanish soap opera on Univision with all the melodrama and exaggerated angst. All the cheesy acting!! Then again, we need the conflict to weave a tale.
At the end, when all is lost for her, Maria does finally show some oomph, some chutzpa, some sense of rage and some indignity. It was almost too late to root for her by then, but you manage a Standing-O because she grew as a character and as a person in those last moments. That is really what we want of these kids: To know they learned something of value!
As for Tony, well…if you don’t have anything nice to say…then just state the lesser of all evils. He kind of sucked because of the annoying, excessively put-on drawl or twang of his speaking voice and the awkward inflexibility of his body language. But he was really, really cute!!
The conflict crests at the rumble between Sharks and Jets. At Tony's urging, the gangs agree that it will be a fistfight, to avoid anything really awful from happening. But a gentleman’s agreement requires gentlemen whose word is worth something and these are kids with an attitude and a chip on their collective shoulder. In the choreographed battle, nerves and fear upend previous decisions made. Switchblades are pulled out and people die. Then the stupidity of all of their actions is evident, but again, all too late.
In a nutshell, “West Side Story” is for us theater lovers who enjoy powerful voices vibrating across and over the heads of people sitting in darkened theater floors and for those of us who love to watch the majestic beauty of classical dance unfold before us. It is for anyone who can overlook the obvious performance aspect of it and just enjoy the bigger picture, the larger element, an
d the words brought to life. It is BROADWAY!!
Shakespeare’s old story is all there, albeit hidden in the bricks of the tenements, in the fenced schoolyard, in the tense gymnasium, in the tears of the girls and the blood of the boys. Yet still alive are the power struggles, the lovers – lost, found and lost again - and the music – always the music. We know them well: “America”, “A Boy Like That”, “Maria”, “One Hand, One Heart”, “I Feel Pretty” and the rest. A few notes and we’re humming, singing and the words returning to us like all good memories stored.
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