REVIVAL! “West Side Story” on Broadway
Y ou know the theme as soon as you hear it: 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 outc ome 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 th...