westsidestory

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy

As Sir Robin carols merrily to King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot, “In any great adventure, if you don’t want to lose…you won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews.”

Eric Idle’s cheeky lyric, which unfailingly generated knowing guffaws from Broadway audiences, proves to be more than a little grounded in truth, as Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy convincingly attests.

This new 90-minute documentary by Michael Kantor, creator of the Emmy-winning series, Broadway: The American Musical, airs on Great Performances Tuesday, January 1 at 9:30 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings.)
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Robert Griffin, Harold Prince, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Gerald Freedman, Sylvia Drulie and unidentified man.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/20/theater/swope-photographs.html?ref=theater

West Side Story: the hit that almost didn’t happen

By Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic

It’s the best musical that you almost never saw.

West Side Story starts a run for Dancap Productions at the Toronto Centre for the Arts this week. It’s the touring company from the most recent Broadway revival of a show that everyone now not only considers a classic but credits with having taken the musical theatre in new and darker directions.

And it almost didn’t happen. Three times.
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West Side Story
A Puerto Rican reading of "America"

by Alberto Sandoval Sanchez

"My final prayer:
O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"
— Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

To my nephew and niece in the U.S.A.,
Laura and Vladimir Estrada Sandoval

After my immigration to Wisconsin in 1973 to attend college, the musical film WEST SIDE STORY frequently was imposed upon me as a "model of of/for" my Puerto Rican ethnic identity. Certainly it was a strange and foreign model for a newcomer, but not for the Anglo-Americans who actualize with my bodily presence their stereotypes of Latinos' Otherness. Over and over again, to make me feel comfortable in their family rooms and to tell me of their knowledge about Puerto Ricans, they would start their conversations with WEST SIDE STORY: "Al, we loved WEST SIDE STORY." "Have you seen the movie'?" "Did you like it?" On other occasions, some people even sang parodically in my ears: "Alberto, I've just met a guy named Alberto." And, how can I forget those who upon my arrival would start tapping flamenco steps and squealing: "I like to be in America!...Everything free in America."[1][open notes in new window] As the years passed by I grew accustomed to their actions and reactions to my presence. I would smile and ignore the stereotype of Puerto Ricans that Hollywood promotes. Or perhaps, was I unwilling to identify with the Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York because of my own prejudices of class or race?
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‘It was revolutionary’
‘West Side Story’ the enduring standard by which musicals are judged

By Michael Grossberg
The Columbus Dispatch

The Jets and Sharks are back on tour, although the American consciousness was never really without them.

In the 55 years since the premiere of the original production, West Side Story has become a touchstone of American life and culture.

“In retrospect, it was revolutionary,” said David Saint, associate director of the national tour, which will open on Tuesday for a weeklong run at the Ohio Theatre.

“Today, people use the musical as such a standard.”
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Romeo and Tony - A West Side Story Question

For school, I’m doing a research project on the differences and similarities of the character Tony from West Side Story and Romeo from Romeo and Juliet. I was just wondering, if anyone working in the show would like to tell me their take on that (How are the two characters alike and different?). Thank you so much, have a great day! -Hannah

Drew Foster - who plays Riff in the national tour of West Side Story (and is a bit of a Shakespeare expert) offered this response to Hannah, a student from New Jersey who attends Washington Township High School. She is well on her way to an A+!
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'West Side Story' goes 'South Park' at ASU
Musical takes new direction while staying true to roots

by Kerry Lengel
The Arizona Republic

"The Book of Mormon" isn't the only big Broadway musical with a "South Park" sensibility. In fact, the scandalous cartoon's influence shows up where you'd least expect it: in a 50-year-old classic, "West Side Story."

The number in question is "Gee, Officer Krupke," in which the street toughs from the Jets, buzzing with adrenaline after the death of gang leader Riff, ridicule the psychologists, sociologists and law-and-order types out to solve America's juvenile-delinquency problem.

It was a scene that the late Arthur Laurents -- who wrote the book to the musical as part of a dream team with composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and choreographer Jerome Robbins -- struggled with when he directed the 2009 Broadway revival.
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