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Home , Carol Lawrence, Ivo van Hove, Larry Kert, Oliver Smith (designer)

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Inspired by Shakespeare’s “,” “West Side Story” opened on Broadway more than six decades ago, but remains as relevant and devastating today, as America still struggles with racism, immigration, poverty and police brutality. The title refers to the musical’s setting, the Upper West Side neighborhood of , roughly in the area now occupied by Lincoln Center. As Puerto Rican gang members from The Sharks clash with white gang members from The Jets, two young people from opposite sides of the social divide fall in love and try to find 1957 BROADWAY 2020 some path to a happy future. The musical introduced many of ORIGINAL PRODUCTION REVIVAL musical theater’s most loved songs — including “Maria,” “Tonight” and “America.” 150 minutes RUNNING TIME 105 minutes The original Broadway production opened on September 26, 2 ACTS 1 1957, and played 732 performances before closing on June 27, Winter Garden THEATER Broadway 1959. It was nominated for six in 1958, winning two: for choreography and Oliver Smith for scenic Mid-1950s SETTING 2020 design. (Topping it for Outstanding Musical that year was “The Jerome Robbins DIRECTOR Ivo van Hove Music Man.”) “West Side Story” was revived on Broadway four

Ballet DANCE STYLE Contemporary times before the current production, which is the first to deviate from the original choreography and book, though the 2009 revival Jerome Robbins Anne Teresa CHOREOGRAPHER translated some lyrics into Spanish. (Yes, This Too) De Keersmaeker “West Side Story” was created by a team of hall-of-fame- Stunning No Ballet. None. “DREAM BALLET” level artists, including (book), TONY Isaac Powell (music), (lyrics) and Jerome Robbins (director and choreographer). Sondheim, the only surviving member of the MARIA Shereen Pimentel original team, was deeply involved in shaping the current revival. White European THE JETS Mixed Race Today, the musical is probably best known from the 1961 film, Puerto Rican THE SHARKS Latinx an adaptation that remained generally faithful to the stage musical and won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. A new film Comic Relief “OFFICER KRUPKE” Police Brutality adaptation by Steven Spielberg is set to premiere this December. Witty and Bright “I FEEL PRETTY” What? Where?

Like The Movies? VIDEO ON STAGE Everywhere QUICK FACTS ABOUT THE REVIVAL Can’t Be Serious RAIN ON STAGE It Pours  Isaac Powell, who plays Tony, is a native of Greensboro and a graduate of the UNC School of the Arts. This overview is produced by JMArts for JM musicians, actors and artsts  Thirty-three of the 50 actors are making their Broadway debuts. attending “West Side Story” on Broadway during the 2020 New York  Dharon E. Jones is the first African-American Riff on Broadway. Arts Adventure. Thank you to the Galloway Ridge Charitable Fund for  Wanting the musical to be “brutal, and very rough,” avant-garde sponsoring our attendance, providing a close-up view of the innovative director Ivo van Hove cut the intermission so the impulsive, artistry from orchestra seats, seven to nine rows from the stage. adolescent gang members would be racing, without time to think, toward the musical’s climax. This gutsy new ‘West Side Story’ is unlike any you’ve seen — and it’s exhilarating

BY PETER MARKS THEATER CRITIC THE WASHINGTON POST

NEW YORK — You can teach an old show new kicks. Look for proof to the bravura audacity of director Ivo van Hove’s movingly gutsy new “West Side Story,” the much anticipated Broadway revisit to the masterwork by the ’50s hive-mind genius of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents. Jan Versweyveld / Van Hove and his choreographer, Belgian postmodernist Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, reminded of the bloody tidings of “” and In 2018, he was accused of disseminating explicit vowed to come up with a “West Side Story” for a the killing field of Agincourt. photos of a dance student, Alexandra Waterbury. new century and a new audience. In the process, I’d heard reports from others during the long The ballet reinstated him after a proceeding, and they’ve devised one that honors the old century previewing period for “West Side Story” — where the “West Side Story” management has issued a and an older audience, too. With some slimming performances began Dec. 10 and its official statement backing him. and slicking, they’ve reduced the running time: opening night was held Thursday — that the Ramasar makes for an elegant ruffian, if not As the intermission and some music have been production’s prominent cinematic conceit was a an entirely stellar Bernardo. Like Ayala’s Anita cut — bye, bye (sad face) “I Feel Pretty” — hindrance to narrative coherence. Maybe because and Dharon E. Jones’s Riff, this is a polished the tragedy of Tony and Maria unfolds in an I’ve grown accustomed to video as a theater performance, but not the standout turn of astonishing, breathless hour and 45 minutes. tool, it didn’t seem a distraction. In any event, some other versions. Bernstein’s melodies and Packed into these 105 minutes are exhilarating as he has proved in productions like his stage Sondheim’s lyrics for “West Side Story” remain new dances to succeed those of the late, great adaptation of “,” van Hove is devoted nonpareil, some of the most lushly soul-stirring Robbins; a set of movie and video images, to the device, and here it’s used brilliantly. Shots theater music ever written. The voices here in projected onto a gigantic screen onstage in the of the actors on city streets, some of them some cases come across as merely adequate, Broadway Theatre; and a recasting that pits the edited into montages, run on that back-wall though the rage-fueled rethink of “Gee, Officer Latinx Sharks against a Jets crew, many of them screen as the characters execute the theatrical Krupke” is excellently accommodated by the played by actors of color, too. Who is fighting elements of “West Side Story” on the minimally actors’ rugged vocal delivery. whom for New York City turf? Well, this “West adorned set by scenery and lighting designer Jan Beauty is reserved here for the sounds Side Story” is the tale of an America in 2020 that Versweyveld. The realism of cinema converges emanating from Pimentel’s captivating Maria is destroying itself from within. mesmerizingly with the representational schema and the extraordinary rendition of “Maria” that Van Hove, a Tony winner in 2016 for his of the stage. Powell performs. I’ve never before believed so direction of “,” had The expository scenes occur in prop-filled fervidly that Tony has found the girl with whom he never staged a musical before. His approach cubicles upstage, in the dress shop where Maria was meant to be. In streamlining the script and here is irreverent, in the sense that there’s not and Anita (Yesenia Ayala) work and in the candy finding his Tony and Maria, van Hove has, like much dis­cern­ible sentimentality for the form. This store operated by Doc, here played with an ideal, an artist with a degree in cardiology, operated leads both to thrilling artistic liberties — and a impotent exasperation by Daniel Oreskes. The on “West Side Story” and freshly exposed its minor glitch or two. On the glorious side is the cubicles function like portals between the stage passionate, throbbing heart.. full emotional embrace of the romance between and filmed action: Actors with video cameras West Side Story, book by Arthur Laurents, a new generation’s Tony and Maria, played by follow their castmates into obscured corners of music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen the marvelously paired Isaac Powell and Shereen these spaces, and audiences must shift to the Sondheim. Directed by Ivo van Hove. Pimentel. Spectacular, too, are De Keersmaeker’s screen to see everything that’s happening. Choreography, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; resetting of the dance at the gym and the This becomes crucial in the upsetting scene sets and lighting, Jan Versweyveld; costumes, prologue, which commences with dancers in Doc’s store, in which the grief-stricken and An D’Huys; sound, Tom Gibbons. With Jacob executing a unison sway — adolescent swagger adrenaline-drenched Jets set upon Anita and Guzman. About 1 hour 45 minutes. $39-$229. as performance art — in which the Sharks and sexually assault her. After Doc rushes in to stop At Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway. 212-239- the Jets size up one another for the slaughter to them, the camera catches the youngest Jet, Baby 6200. telecharge.com. come. John (Matthew Johnson), curled up in a fetal And, whoa, when violence erupts in the position in a corner. An audience accustomed to fateful rumble by the highway! Van Hove and De violence captured in close-up absorbs the shock Keersmaeker conceive of it as a full-blown storm of the act as a sad fact of modern life. That the Peter Marks is theater critic for The Washington Post of rainwater and testosterone, on a bare, soaked show itself has become embroiled in controversy and a member of JMArts, the Jordan-Matthews Arts stage. As the Jets of yore themselves might say, over an alleged sexual transgression makes the Foundation. He plans to have a 90-minute lunch with JM “Whammo! Blammo!” Possibly even better is the moment all the more intense: Demonstrations artists during our New York Arts Adventure the day after aftermath: With the bodies of dead and wounded have been organized outside the theater at some we see “West Side Story” — to discuss that musical, men strewn across the concrete battlefield, their performances in protest of the casting of New other theater the students have seen in the city and women arriving to claim or comfort them, you’re York City Ballet star Amar Ramasar as Bernardo. anything else they want to pursue.