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About the play –
Over the years, various critics, audience members, creative teams, and performers have attempted to define West Side Story. Is it merely a modern remake of the Shakespearean classic, Romeo and Juliet? Is it, as writer Martha Gelhorn argued, “a musical tragedy that were it not for the most beautiful music, and the dancing which is like flying, people would not be able to bear to look at and see and understand?” Or is it the landmark musical that fused contemporary speech and action with classical symphonic structure? It may be all of these. But most importantly to original director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, “it’s an American musical. The aim in the mid-50s was to see if all of us – Lenny who wrote “long-hair” music, Arthur who wrote serious plays, myself who did serious ballets… could bring our acts together and do a work on the popular stage … where the poetry of the piece would come of our best attempts as serious artists.” In 1949, Robbins proposed the idea of writing a musical based on Romeo and Juliet. It would be set in the slums of east NYC during Passover/Easter and explore the collision of Catholic and Jewish culture. The script was entitled East Side Story. But in 1955, working with Arthur Laurents, Bernstein and Robbins decided to acknowledge the effect of recent Puerto Rican immigration and the rise of gang violence and change its title.
While Laurents kept much of the shape and content of Shakespeare’s play, he found Juliet’s “false death and entombment” preposterous and re-crafted the second act of the musical to avoid it. He also crystallized the street violence between the two gangs; Sharks are the new arrivals from Puerto Rico in search of their own turf, while the Jets are from Manhattan trying to hang on to theirs. Because Bernstein composed Candide and West Side Story in tandem, there were some intriguing switches of material between the two shows. “One Hand, One Heart” was originally written for Candide and Cunegond, while that couple’s marriage duet started out as a song for Tony and Maria in a tea party scene that was cut. Lyricist Sondheim’s task was “to bring the language down to the level of real simplicity” and find the balance of love, passion, and authenticity, as well as the clash of two powerful cultures. “Maria” began its life as a Neapolitan street song, and through collaboration between Bernstein and Sondheim, became a ballad to the beauty of a woman’s name. Bernstein said, “it took longer to write that song than any other. It’s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.”
The play opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater on September 26, 1957. While some critics never acknowledged this musical’s impact, most, with audiences, responded that this was a masterpiece and a triumph. The Broadway success was matched by the cinematic version released in 1961. The show won Tonys for scenic design and choreography, while the film garnered 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and a special award for Robbins’ brilliant choreography.
Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist for West Side Story, penned a powerful handwritten note on the afternoon of the Broadway premiere: “West Side Story means more to me than a first show, more than the privilege of collaborating with you and Arthur and Jerry. It marks the beginning of what I hope will be a long and enduring friendship. Friendship is a thing I give or receive rarely, but for what it’s worth, I want you to know you have it from me always. … May [West Side Story] mean as much to the theater and to people who see it as it has to us.”
About the production –
Despite most of our vivid memories of West Side Story as a cinematic nod to the streets of New York City, Bernstein and Robbins originally conceived the piece in an abstract locale. As director Michael Jenkinson notes, “the setting should feel urban – New York like, without New York specifics.” Because so much of the play is explored through explosive dance and movement, the stage needs to offer a sense of that expansion both horizontal and vertical. Jenkinson also wants to celebrate the “clean lines of 1958.” So costume supports not only the time period, but also the specificity of character. This is a dangerous world of Jets and Sharks in battles for life and turf, not the 1950s styling of Grease. Color is a dominant focus of this production both for the iconic imagery it reinforces, and for the clarity it brings to each ethnicity and each character. And that color distinction and sensibility are reflected in lighting choices which help to define specific locales, or allow us to enter into a realm for the “Somewhere” dream ballet that can support tranquility and harmony in sharp contrast to the two cultures so actively in collision.
For the director and his team, it is the score that serves as the primary inspiration and as a powerful actor in the play. That celebration of the symphonic nature of this piece will be enforced with new and vibrant choreography that acknowledges the dynamic and transformative style of Jerome Robbins’ original work, yet plays to Jenkinson’s own strengths and innovations.
About the authors –
In his essay on the composer Leonard Bernstein, John Mauceri observed that “Few composers capture their time and become the iconic voice of their age. Leonard Bernstein found his "voice" in the early 1940s and projected the sound of urban and urbane America from the period of World War II to the anti-war movements of the 1970s and the restoration of freedom in Europe, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism….Leonard Bernstein projected a simple message of understanding and hope employing both complex and simple forms and styles - yet always sounding like ‘Bernstein,’ a voice best known in his score to West Side Story.” Other critics and historians have noted that Bernstein wanted “to persuade his enormous audience that twentieth-century music was as beautiful in its own ways as that of earlier centuries.”
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918, Bernstein was an avid music student from his youth. He graduated from Harvard University in 1939 and went on to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's newly created summer institute, Tanglewood. There he would become Serge Koussevitzky's conducting assistant. His first permanent conducting post came with the New York Philharmonic in 1943. After Koussevitzky died in 1951, Bernstein headed the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood. In 1951 he married the Chilean actress and pianist Felicia Montealegre.
Bernstein became official Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 until 1969; more than half of Bernstein's 400-plus recordings were made with that symphony orchestra. He also travelled and conducted internationally; in Tel Aviv, he began a long-standing relationship with musical enterprises throughout Israel that lasted until his death in 1990. He was also the first American to conduct at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Throughout his career, Bernstein was a staunch advocate for American composers, in particular Aaron Copland. Inspired by both Copland’s work and his own Jewish heritage, Bernstein created his first major symphonic work: Symphony No. 1 -- Jeremiah (1943). In addition to a vast classical repertoire, he composed operas and worked in a powerful collaboration with choreographer Jerome Robbins on three major ballets. He went on to write the score for the award-winning movie On the Waterfront (1954) and music for Broadway including: On The Town, Wonderful Town and Candide (1956). In 1957, he renewed his Candide collaboration with Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, on the landmark musical West Side Story which was later released as an Academy Award-winning film.
Arthur Laurents (born July 14, 1918) is a Playwright, stage director, and screenwriter whose credits include West Side Story, Gypsy and The Way We Were. Growing up in Flatbush Brooklyn, Laurents lived a complex childhood caught between his orthodox Jewish grandparents and his far more lax secular parents. After graduation from Cornell University, Laurents pursued his interest in radio at NYU where his instructor submitted his script entitled Now Playing Tomorrow, to the network: it was produced and its success led to an active scriptwriting career. After military service, which included additional scripts for military radio, he worked as freelance writer and began to explore Broadway play production with a drama about anti-Semitism in the military. Home of the Brave opened on December 27, 1945 and ran for 69 performances. Five years later, his second Broadway production, The Bird Cage , was even less successful. But in 1952, his The Time of the Cuckoo ran for 263 performances and was later adapted as the musical Do I Hear a Waltz? His other great successes came from his collaborations with Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins on the books for West Side Story and Gypsy. In 2008, Laurents directed a Broadway revival of Gypsy and in 2009, he tackled a bilingual revival of West Side Story.
Stephen Sondheim (lyricist) was born in New York City to Herbert Sondheim, a successful dress manufacturer, and Janet Fox, a fashion designer. His parents divorced when he was ten, and he moved with his mother to Bucks County, Pennsylvania where a close neighbor was the playwright, lyricist and producer Oscar Hammerstein II. Sondheim continued his piano studies while Hammerstein tutored him in musical theater. This mentorship continued through Sondheim’s years at Williams College, and resulted in scripts and scores for four shows. While Sondheim's first efforts at securing a Broadway assignment were unsuccessful, he found work writing for television, and made the acquaintance of playwright Arthur Laurents. At age 25 he was hired to write lyrics for the landmark musical West Side Storyandafter its success, he wrote the lyrics for Laurents’ next production Gypsy.
Sondheim’s first foray as both composer and lyricist came in 1962 with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Sondheim collaborated with Arthur Laurents again on Anyone Can Whistle(1964). But his breakthrough came with Company(1971); as his biographers have noted, this musical broke sharply with Broadway's past, and established Sondheim as the most inventive and daring composer working in musical theater. His next production, A Little Night Music, was a grand success and its signature song, "Send in the Clowns," became a pop standard. In addition to winning Tonys for both of these shows, Sondheim cemented his relationship with director and producer Harold Prince and the two worked on Pacific Overtures(1976), an imaginative account of relations between Japan and the United States from the 1850s to the present. Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street(1979) adapted Victorian melodrama and contemporary horror as a bitter satire on life and love. After the limited run of Merrily We Roll Along, Sondheim embarked on a partnership with playwright and director James Lapine. Together they produced two huge successes: Sunday in the Park With George(1984), a work inspired by the works of pointillist painter Georges Seurat and the winner of that year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Into the Woods(1987), a piece that explores the meaning inside fairytales. Sondheim followed with Assassins(1990), a dark exploration of the motives and delusions of the individuals who murdered American presidents and finally the less successful Passion (1994) and Road Show opened off-Broadway in 2008. |
