The revival of West Side Story has been mortally divided against itself, done to death by its own staging and design choices. Read helen_e_shaw's review
The balcony-less balcony scene in West Side Story, at the Broadway Theatre. Photo: Julieta Cervantes There’s a rumble on Broadway right now, and — just as with those poor unfortunate Jets and Sharks — nobody’s winning. The tussle is happening right in the middle of West Side Story, where the Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s revival has been mortally divided against itself, done to death by its own staging and design choices.
To be clear, this isn’t a blanket condemnation of fixing something that wasn’t broke. Of course it’s understandable that a director would encounter this material and want to rebel. There’s the challenge of its terrifying parentage: composed by Leonard Bernstein, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, shaped by Jerome Robbins. In musical-theater terms, that’s all our daddies in one place, and the content is pure teenage fury.
Even though this show has been freaking out critics since the beginning, the new team has decided to emphasize the show’s savagery. The already vile “taunting” of Maria’s friend Anita has been translated into an unambiguous rape scene, caught in a hidden corner of the set by a voyeuristic camera. The racial makeup has changed — the Jets, written as a white gang, are now a diverse group led by a black Riff , sometimes deliberately making it difficult to tell the Jets and Sharks apart.
Which brings us back to that strange divided quality, that sense of a production fighting internally and leaving the actors to fend for themselves.
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