If you've created an icon of American musical theater, you can sit down and rest on your royalties. Or you can shake up your audiences by reinventing your invention.
Arthur Laurents made a brave decision. Go back and tweak what had been a phenomenally successful show by refining the book (the script) that he wrote for West Side Story. He wanted a tale that would speak with the same power for the next generation, maybe even lure a few new people into the audience. He wanted to make clear that the macho decisions of the gangs roaming those 1950s streets had ugly life-and-death consequences.
At the opening night of the current tour stop of West Side Story, a few of the folks in the audience were not pleased to discover that the Puerto Rican Sharks, and their girlfriends, actually speak Spanish, the most obvious change to the book.
The two languages completely underscore the battle between "us" Americans (the kids whose parents came to this country in the last generation) and "them" new guys (the current crop of darker skinned folks getting off the boat). And if you think that battle is over, you haven't been listening to some of the uglier dialogue in the curret presidential campaigns.
Did the bilingual dialogue and song lyrics actually impede understanding of the show? Probably not. Most of the lines were simply repeats or variations on what already was said in English. A little concentration on the body language displayed by a superb set of dancers quickly conveyed the menance, poignancy, or humor of a scene.
Having said that, let's be clear. Laurents didn't turn West Side Story upside down. His revisions keep to the same tale that he told more than fifty years ago when the show premiered on Broadway. Or, as my companion of the evening said as the chainlink fence and freeway bridge descended upon the stage prior to the big rumble: "I don't think he added a happy ending."
What was kept, and what keeps audiences coming back to this show, was a Romeo-and-Juliet love story that makes big guys sniffle, the brilliant musical score by Leonard Bernstein, the sharp and witty lyrics of Stephen Sondheim (which sound just as fine in Spanish translation), and the incredible dance sequences created by Jerome Robbins. Or, again to quote my companion (who doesn't like ballet), "this is the one show that I'd see again just to watch the dancing."
Like a lot of the whistle stops by Broadway Across America, you only have a few more days to catch this before it closes January 15 at the Paramount. But if you do, you'll see a fresh, tough, absolutely edgy production performed by a high energy team of actors who deserve that classic Seattle standing ovation.
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