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

In 1957 Jerome Robbins brought what many consider to be the finest musical ever made to the Broadway spotlight. An updating of Romeo and Juliet set amid the gangs of modern New York, West Side Story replaces the Capulets and Montagues with the Jets and the Sharks, highlighting the ever-present battle between the whites and the Puerto Ricans in Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Perhaps even more impressive than the story, the music is at once sweeping and sweet, funny and deadly serious. Filled with love songs and rants against the system, exhuberant outpourings of joy and harsh grating songs overlaying death scenes, there's hardly anything you don't experience just by listening to the music.

The entire production was a tour de force, with Robbins' direction and choreography, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim in his Broadway debut. It almost didn't happen. Oscar Hammerstein had to convince Sondheim (who wanted to write both lyrics and music) to do the project. Boy are we all glad he did.

The cast consisted almost entirely of unknown actors. Larry Kert played Tony, the white "Romeo" character and Carol Lawrence Maria, the Puerto Rican "Juliet." Chita Rivera, later Rosie in Bye Bye, Birdie played Anita, the head Puerto Rican female, the "Nurse" character. She is really the only cast member who went on to a full career on Broadway.

The Songs

This is truly glorious stuff. From the first note of the Prologue to the last note of the Finale this music sweeps us into the lives of the Jets and the Sharks, the love between Tony and Maria, the anger both sides feel toward the other and toward the system. We don't need any words to feel the tension right from the very start, from the first note of the Prologue.

The sense of family and connection between gang members and the animosity between the Jets and Sharks are clearly illustrated in the Jet Song setting the tone for the rest of the musical. Mostly a spewing of anger on top of a strong fast beat, a rather pretty soft swirly melody underlies the anger at times, providing an interesting contrast to the lyrics.

Perhaps the prettiest and most optimistic song ever written for the Broadway stage, Something's Coming manages to capture that feeling we all have at times that something better is due to happen, a feeling of hope for the future and a feeling that things will look up if you just hang in for a little while longer. A soft melody that builds throughout the song just as the anticipation for whatever's about to happen grows, it's perhaps the perfect match of music and lyrics:

It may come cannonballing down
Through the sky
Gleam in its eye, bright as rose
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach
Down the block, on a beach
Under a tree

West Side Story is as ever a study in contrasts, and the next song is about as far from optimistic and pretty as you can get. The Dance at the Gym is a strong fast instrumental musical battle between the gangs as the Jets challenge the Sharks to rumble. Just as the tension rises, a soft interlude (based on the song Maria) interrupts as Tony and Maria meet for the first time.

Maria is a pure outpouring of love and infatuation. Sung by Tony just after the dance where he first meets Maria, it is a grand sweeping song, with operatic elements. It alternates between soft awestruck idoltry and the occasional faster influx of impatience. It is perhaps the purest expression of the wonder of first love I've ever heard:

Maria!
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying

Perhaps the most famous scene in all of literature, the balcony scene plays out on a fire escape facing a deserted alley as Maria and Tony sing Tonight. If Maria perfectly expresses the idoltry of first love, Tonight takes it one step further illustrating how first love can make you almost burst, can make the whole world seem like a better place, and how difficult it is to say goodbye to the person you love, even if only for the night. Tonight is hauntingly beautiful, the music swelling then ebbing around the words, the feelings:

Tonight, tonight,
The world is wild and bright.
Going mad, shooting sparks into space.
Today the world was just an address.
A place for me to live in,
No better than all right,
But here you are
And what was just a world is a star
Tonight!

Moving away from the drama and excitement of gang warfare and the stirrings of first love, America is a witty look at how the Puerto Ricans idealize their homeland, remembering only good and forgetting how miserable conditions really were. With a backdrop of tropical sounding music and wildly beating drums, this is Anita's moment to shine in the musical, and Chita Rivera injects just the right amount of sarcasm into the song:

{Others}Puerto Rico, island of tropical breezes
Always the pineapples growing,
Always the coffee blossoms blowing
{Anita}Puerto Rico, you ugly island
Island of tropic diseases
Always the hurricanes blowing
Always the population growing

Cool brings us right back to the impeding gang war. Sung by the Jets as they wait for the Sharks to show up, there is a tension here, conveyed by the ever-snapping fingers, soft yet strident voices, and somewhat discordant music.

Just before the battle Tony and Maria meet again and sing the beautiful song One Hand, One Heart to reconfirm their love for one another as they imagine their wedding. An exercise in harmony, it's difficult to tell where one voice starts and another begins, even at times where the music stops and the voices begin. This is the slowest song in the musical, and the softest, and one of the most haunting.

As the two gangs head for the faceoff they sing a harsher, strident version of Tonight, interrupted briefly by another interlude between Tony and Maria. It's a very effective reuse of a song to create a totally different mood than the original appearance.

Finally, it's here. The Rumble between the Jets and Sharks. Brewing for the entire show and before, harsh strident instrumental tracks with overlaying dialogue really express the discordance and animosity happening on stage. Riff and Bernardo die, Bernardo at Tony's hands. I can see a battle just by listening to the song.

As Maria gets ready to meet Tony, she sings I Feel Pretty about how Tony's love makes her feel more beautiful than Miss America:

I feel stunning
And entrancing.
Feel like running and dancing for joy.
For I'm loved
By a pretty wonderful boy!

Tony and Maria are trapped by circumstance, by their different backgrounds and different loyalties. But Somewhere there must be a place for them, a place where nothing matters but their love. A pretty ballet full of hope, containing long instrumental sections and even longer sections explicitly expressing Tony and Maria's longing for a place to go to be free of everything but their love together then finally an ending where reality hits and they realize that no world can be as perfect as the one they imagine. Somewhere is a seven minute microcosm of the entire show, expressing how hopes and dreams eventually turn into gritty usually unhappy reality.

Not knowing how to react to the gruesome outcome of the rumble, the Jets portray their world in a comic light, the way they feel adults and the system mistreats them. Railing against the police, social workers, psychiatrists, judges, and other stalwarts of the legal system, Officer Krumpke is at once deliciously funny and tragic, a song you can't help but laugh at but one that also addresses the very real issue of how teenagers are tossed about without much care in the legal system:

{to psychiatrist}My father is a bastard,
My ma's an S.O.B.
My grandpa's always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea,
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress,
Goodness gracious, that's why I'm a mess!

The penultimate song, A Boy Like That/I Have a Love is an angry outpouring of Anita's animosity when she finds out Maria loves Tony, the boy who killed Bernardo, Maria's brother and Anita's love. Maria responds to this outburst with a wish that Anita be happy she's in love. The first part of the song is a dead-on expression of the outrage that would be felt in that situation. The second part, I Have a Love is the only song (or song fragment if you will) that I don't like in all of West Side Story. It doesn't seem to fit in with A Boy Like That, and although Maria needs to defend herself and her love to Anita after the accusations hurled at her, this song doesn't do it for me.

Anita can't see past the fact that Bernardo is dead and Tony killed him. To the backdrop of the Finale she tells him that Maria is dead. Desolate, Tony wants to die too and lets the Sharks avenge Bernardo's death. Maria shows up and they long for their "Somewhere" as Tony dies in her arms.

You can follow the entire story of the Jets and the Sharks, of Tony and Maria, just from the music. The music exhudes their emotions, always fits the action. Aside from being a truly fine collection of music, it is an extension of the story of Tony and Maria, of Romeo and Juliet.

The Extras

The recent re-release on CD of the Original Cast Recording includes nine bonus tracks - instrumental tracks from the New York Philharmonic's Symphonic Dances, a 1962 production of Bernstein songs from and based on the music of West Side Story.

The Liner Notes

Filled with black and white photographs of the original show, background information on the original production, track listings, and the thoughts of an original Jet, Martin Charnin, as he looks back on the phenomenon that was West Side Story, Columbia did an excellent job providing added value in the liner notes. Charnin's remarks are particularly interesting as they help people who weren't around in 1957 understand just how big West Side Story really was.

Summing Up

Today West Side Story lives for most of us as a movie starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, and Rita Moreno as Maria, Tony, and Anita. It is an excellent movie and deserves to be watched over and over. But for the full effect of the music, listen to the Original Broadway Cast recording. There's something magical about the way Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert interact vocally, something magical about the way Chita Rivera injects just the right amount of sarcasm into America and just the right amount of venom into A Boy Like That. Something magical burst into our consciousness in 1957, something that makes us all yearn for that somewhere where we can all live and love and be happy, something wonderful that can still be experienced by listening to this recording.