One of the perks of being a theater critic, in those dog days of the season when you find yourself struggling to sit through the latest Chekhov revival or pretentious little comedy about tightly wound New York singles, is the Broadway-musical revival. Yes, you can complain as I often have about unimaginative commercial producers who keep recycling surefire classics like Gypsy or Guys and Dolls. But there's good reason they're recycled so often: they are surefire unfailingly entertaining, no matter how uninspired the production, the indomitable high points of a genre that is America's great contribution to world theater.
As someone who likes to think I have a fairly complete education in the Broadway musical, however, one show holds a special place: West Side Story. Of all the widely accepted masterpieces of the genre, it's the one I have never seen onstage. Nor even until a few weeks ago, when I finally broke down and rented the DVD the multiple-Oscar-winning 1961 movie. Of course, I know most of the Leonard BernsteinStephen Sondheim score; I've seen enough clips to be familiar with the famed Jerome Robbins choreography; and I'd have to be a pretty benighted theatergoer not to know at least the central conceit of the story Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet transplanted to the street gangs of New York City in the 1950s.
Still, last week's opening of a new revival of West Side Story the first on Broadway since 1980 gave me the rare opportunity of encountering an American musical classic in the way, by rights, every show ought to be encountered: as if for the first time. No memories of the original to protect or, conversely, any need for a radical reinvention to renew my interest. No, I came to West Side Story simply to find out whether, in 2009, the show still entertains, excites, lives up to its gargantuan reputation. And my verdict, alas, is: Not quite.
To be sure, you can't look at West Side Story totally removed from the era that produced it. When it opened, in 1957, Broadway musicals were almost all comedies, set in sentimental fantasylands, whether exotic (The King and I), nostalgic (The Music Man) or contemporary but cartoonish (Guys and Dolls). Here, instead, was an effort to use the musical form to explore serious contemporary social issues: urban slums, race prejudice, the scourge (ah, the '50s!) of “juvenile delinquency." It was also a groundbreaking marriage of pop entertainment and “high culture": choreography that featured classical ballet moves, a score with elements of modernist art music, and a story whose tragic arc was as close to grand opera as the American musical had come. (See the top 10 theater productions of the past year.)
In this new production, directed by Arthur Laurents author of the original book and now 91 years old the story is what seems least compelling. Partly this is due to the competent but bland cast. As Tony, leader of the Anglo gang the Jets, Matt Cavenaugh is an attractive, sweet-voiced Broadway leading man, but he doesn't look like he could survive a game of touch football, must less a gang rumble. As Maria, the virginal Puerto Rican girl he falls for, newcomer Josefina Scaglione has a lovely voice and good energy but seems to be acting by the numbers.
But some of the fault, I think, lies in the original script, which might be hefty enough for a sung-through opera but here seems too thin to live up to its ambitions. I don't expect a stage musical about street gangs to have the grit or nuance of the better Hollywood films of the same era, like Blackboard Jungle or Rebel Without a Cause (though a cast of gang members who didn't look like they stepped out of a Chorus Line audition might help). But I do want a love story with at least a hint of conviction, plausibility or sexual heat. The attraction of Maria and Tony is barely motivated to begin with; with two charisma-deficient stars in the roles, it left me cold.
The dancing holds up the best. Robbins' iconic street ballets adapted by Joey McKneely are still vibrant and emotional, and they provide the show with its theatrical high points, especially the climactic rumble that ends Act I. Even so, I felt the production lacked some grandeur, largely because the dancers seemed a bit cramped on the stage of the Palace Theatre. (One night later I watched four actors nearly lost in a vast expanse of stage in a new comedy called The God of Carnage. Can theaters make midseason trades?)
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