West Side Story [Remaster] - Original Cast (CD 1998)

Originally, it was supposed to be East Side Story, Romeo and Juliet updated to focus on conflicts between Catholics and Jews. This would have made it precisely daring as Abie's Irish Rose, the hoariest Broadway warhorse of the first half of the twentieth century. Fortunately, the groups were changed to whites and Puerto Ricans, and the show gained an urgency that has only lately started to peter out.

The Show

It's about Tony, who feels that something great is going to happen to him even as gang leader Riff is trying to reenlist him. It's about the conflict between Tony's old gang, the Jets, and the Puerto Rican Sharks, fighting over the same small, urban turf. It's about the Shark leader Bernardo's sister Maria, who falls in love with Tony at a high school dance. And it's about the tragedy that results when these young lovers get caught in the middle of an escalating gang war and try to make things better.

But, according to lyricist Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story isn't really about any of those things: it's about a way to tell a story. It's about the mylar curtain that drops behind Maria and transports us to the dance. It's about the contrast between the youth of the cast and the musical ambition of composer Leonard Bernstein. And it's about using dance to show the violence between the two gangs.

That dance was choreographed by Jerome Robbins with the assistant of Peter Gennaro, and it as much a part of the fabric of the piece as the score or Arthur Laurents' astonishingly short book. Robbins' dances remain so impressive that they were recently used in a series of commercials for The Gap.

Despite the significance of the show, it wasn't a hit. The movie was the hit, and it made the songs standards and turned the names of the gangs and characters into household words. Since then, the show has been a particular favorite of young people.

Apparently, that affection has started to dim, as students at a high school recently protested the school's proposed production on the grounds that it was racist and promoted the use of violence to solve problems. At first glance, those objections look ridiculous- West Side Story intends to be a strong condemnation of both racism and violence. But I think there is some validity to questioning a work about Puerto Ricans that was written by a group of Jewish guys who didn't bother to learn much about the culture they were using for the show. It will be interesting to see how the show holds up over the next forty years.

The Score

Bernstein orginally intended to write both music and lyrics, but found himself overwhelmed when working on both Candide and this show simultaneously. Sondheim wanted to write lyrics for his own music and had to be talked into collaborating with Bernstein on the lyrics by his mentor Oscar Hammerstein. Perhaps because of his reluctance to accept the project, the lyricist has been highly critical of his work on the show. When Sheldon Harnick pointed out that Maria sounded like a well educated debutante in "I Feel Pretty," Sondheim tried to get his collaborators to accept a simplified version of the lyric (they kept the original.)

Bernstein was remarkably generous is giving Sondheim full credit for the lyrics (and Sondheim was remarkably naive in refusing to take the larger share of the royalties that might have accompanied this change in his billing.)

My favorite parts of the score are those which capitalize on the youth of the characters. I love the urgency of "Something's Coming," the drive of the music perfectly matched by the percussive stream of consonants. "The Dance at the Gym" is a marvel of telling a story through music, especially when Tony and Maria meet and the delicacy of the music cuts through the blaring sounds that have come before. Les Miserables ripped off the Quintet, but didn't do it nearly as well. As all of the characters sing about they plan for "Tonight," the music builds in waves of energy that are going to have to crash down somewhere.

The Recording

Although the movie was much more successful that the Broadway production, I think the cast album is the recording to get. The sound here is more raw and less phony than the heavily dubbed soundtrack album (none of the film's principals did their own singing.) You get the songs in proper show order and, although many people prefer the expanded "America" of the film version, I think most of the changes made for the movie were bad ones.

The original performances are pretty unassailable. Tony Kert may be a little bland as Tony, but he has a supple voice that keeps the character real. Carol Lawrence has a tentative sweetness as Maria that works exceedingly well. Neither is as showy as Chita Rivera as the fiery Anita, and neither went on to have the career that the brash, sexy Rivera has had.

My only quibble with the performers here is that I find the voice of Reri Grist, who sings the off stage "Somewhere" distractingly legitimate: it sounds like the kids develop a taste for operetta along with their fantasy of getting along. This certainly is not Grist's fault. The concept of the song just doesn't work for me.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about the Columbia Masterworks Reissue CD. The sound is great. Ken Mandelbaum's notes are okay, but the print is ridiculously small and I hate the old fashioned font they used. Martin Charnin's reminiscences of the original production continue the tradition of praising it beyond all reason (everybody who talks about this show sounds like they are describing their high school musical.) The bonus tracks consist of nine Symphonic Dances from the show recorded by the New York Philharmonic with Bernstein conducting. I find them to be almost completely uninteresting, a mere repetition of the dance music I've just listened to. More astute listeners will surely appreciate them.