West Side Story

the music in West Side, though more demanding of the singers, is not used in any basically new way; the “Quintet,” while extraordinary, is straight out of dreaded opera. The music for the dances is extraordinarily exciting; that music and the basic story are the lasting strengths of the show. The difference between the music of West Side Story and other shows, however, is in quality, not in purpose.

The book is the shortest on record, yet the last third of the play doesn't have one musical number, neither song nor dance. That was new for a musical but it was an accident. The last scene culminates in a monologue in which Maria threatens everyone with a gun. The monologue was intended to be an aria sung by Maria; the speech I wrote for her was a dummy lyric. But Lenny never found music that satisfied him and so to this day, West Side Story innovatively ends with a speech that is a dummy lyric.

What we really did stylistically with West Side Story was take every musical theatre technique as far as it could be taken. Scene, song and dance were integrated seamlessly; we did it all better than anyone ever had before. We were not the innovators we were called but what we did achieve was more than enough to be proud of. . . .

Every musical, like every play, begins with the word—no matter how much music it is set to or muffled by. We began with an outline I put on the table . . . . I divided the play into two acts, detailing in each scene the characters, action, and musical elements. The story line followed Shakespeare's fairly closely, although I eliminated and changed to suit contemporary time and place, and to allow song and/or dance to tell as much of the story as one or the other or both could.

L to r: Jerry Robbins, Arthur Laurents and stage The first change I made was early, in manager Ruth Mitchell in WSS rehearsal in D.C. the opening scene, in fact: I threw out Rosalind. Heresy, but I think Shakespeare should have. His prologue establishes Romeo as lovesick for Rosalind but two minutes later, one look at Juliet and he is lovesick again.

Making him callow and explaining why Juliet is so much the better role. Love at first sight for her is her first love; I made it his as well.

Jerry's suggestion that each have a short, introductory scene before they meet added to the effectiveness of both roles but his staging of the meeting [at the dance] did more than any words could. It was theatre magic, a literally breathtaking example of why he was without peer in staging a musical. No one else could have or would have taken a murderous knife fight and an attempted gang rape and choreographed them so vividly and theatrically that the impact was emotionally devastating.

The parents of both lovers I also eliminated because the play no longer centered on a family feud but on a tribal feud: ethnic warfare between juvenile gangs. The impartial, civilized Duke who ruled the territory became the police who ruled the streets. Bigoted and brutal themselves, they encouraged and promoted bigotry and brutality among the kids they controlled.

Shakespeare’s Prologue sets up lovers and love, West Side Story’s Prologue sets up a world of violence and prejudice in which the lovers try to survive.