WEST SIDE STORY 2021
By armen pandola
On September 26, 1957, West Side Story (WSS) opened on Broadway to rave reviews. It has not been out of production since then. The story of star-crossed lovers from rival families or clans or gangs is an old one. Shakespeare penned the most famous version and called it Romeo and Juliet. Three Hundred and Fifty years later, Jerome Robbins, an American choreographer and director, had the idea of updating the story and putting it to music. Leonard Bernstein, boy wonder conductor and composer, was enlisted to write the music and an even younger prodigy, Stephan Sondheim, was commissioned to write the lyrics. Veteran playwright, Arthur Laurents, wrote the book. Together, they created one of the great works of the 20th Century - and they never all worked together again.
In 1961, a movie was made based on the show and was greeted with even greater acclaim, winning 10 Oscars. One of the multitude of trivia questions about this movie is - what director won Best Director for his first and only movie? Jerome Robbins co-directed with Robert Wise and not only never made another movie but was fired from the job less than half-way through production. It didn’t matter - he had already left his imprint.
The new WSS movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and with a script by Tony Kushner, has kept all the elements and characters that are important to the story including its original late 1950s time - rival gangs, the Jets (white) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican), fight for turf on the West Side of NYC when a former Jet (Tony) and a Puerto Rican (Maria) fall in love. Riff, leader of the Jets, is best friends with Tony while Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, is Maria’s brother and lover of Maria’s best friend, Anita. The main characters are rounded out by two police officers and the owner of a neighborhood store, Doc in the original show and movie and his widow, Valentina, a Puerto Rican woman, in Kushner’s script. Kushner also adds another level of conflict by setting the action in the ‘slum’ that is being cleared (destroyed) so that Lincoln Center can be built.
The changes are minimal in spite of the news stories about how the new movie has eliminated racist Puerto Rican references. The real change is that the new script provides a more complete backstory for the main characters - Tony is on parole for having almost killed a rival gang member in a previous rumble or fight, Bernardo is a professional prize fighter, Anita and Maria don’t work in a local dress shop but instead Anita works from home as a seamstress and Maria as an overnight cleaner at Gimbels. Chino, Maria’s Bernardo-approved Puerto Rican suitor, is made an accountant-to-be and a more sympathetic character than in the original where he is really just a vehicle for the plot.
Go see it. WSS still has the ability to move you in a multitude of ways and the new movie has the most important element from the original - the music and lyrics. There are just very few musicals that have music this good - Gustav Dudamel does the conducting. And the lyrics keep on giving voice to the basic emotions that still drive human actions - the pride of belonging (When you’re a jet, you’re a jet all the way form your first cigarette to your last dyin’ day), the magic of first love (Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing— Say it soft and it's almost like praying), the impatience of youth (Today, The minutes seem like hours, The hours go so slowly, And still the sky is light . . . Oh moon, grow bright, And make this endless day endless night!) and the longing for a place in this world (There's a place for us, A time and place for us. Hold my hand and we're halfway there. Hold my hand and I'll take you there…Somehow, Some day, Somewhere!)
A big deal was made about the fact that the Puerto Rican characters sometimes speak Spanish with no subtitles - it does add to the authenticity and is perfectly understandable by anyone. The Doc - Valentina switch is more problematic. Played by Rita Moreno who played Anita in the 1961 movie, Valentina sings Somewhere instead of Tony and Maria which makes the reconciliation of Tony and Maria after the rumble seem forced and choppy. Also, by having Valentina and the late Doc as a ‘mixed’ couple (white and Puerto Rican), it diminishes the difficulty and uniqueness of Tony and Maria’s relationship. Also, there has been much written about how the violence of the sexual assault on Anita by the Jets is more realistic than the original movie - not true. In fact, the violence of this scene in the original is much more visceral.
These are minor defects compared to the achievement of bringing this great musical to life for a new generation of cast and crew. Justin Peck did the choreography, borrowing heavily from Jerome Robbins’s original direction. The cast are uniformly very good with a stand-out performance by Mike Faist as Riff.
In the end, we have a new WSS to enjoy and that can’t be anything but good news for fans of the much too Disneyfied movie musicals of our time. It makes one long for more - how about a new Guys and Dolls movie?
Starring: Ana Isabelle, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Curtiss Cook, David Alvarez, Ezra Menas, Jamie Harris, Jamila Velazquez, Josh Andrés Rivera, Kyle Allen, Maddie Ziegler, Mike Faist, Rachel Zegler, Rita Moreno, Talia Ryde
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Crime, Musical
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 156 min