It's official. West Side Story ditches some of the spanish - Page 5

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 1:38pm

I'm pretty sure, between Equity and the actors' agents, they would not be allowed to do any show without bows today. I remember when I worked on a production of MARAT/SADE in college and the director said he wished he could end the show with the riot and then just bring the lights up, but he had to do a curtain call because of the union.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 3:33pm

he had to do a curtain call because of the union.

And you believed him?

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 3:42pm

The rule is that the curtain call is subject to the director's artistic discretion.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 3:42pm

You were in an Equity production in college?

[winston89]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 9:40pm

Curtain is right. Please don't tell me that you forgotten how A Chorus Line ends.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 10:51pm

Going off-topic for a moment, I love how often you'll hear directors and/or producers try to say they can or can't do something because of Equity, and in most of those cases it's something that Equity couldn't care less about.

I used to see that the most often when working with the Guest Artist contract. I always wondered if it was something that some Equity guest artist had made up in the past because they didn't want to do something and the director just carried it with him like it was fact without bothering to check to see if it was true.

Anyway, back on topic.

There is such a fine line that must be drawn with these types of shows where the original staging is so iconic to prevent them from becoming robotic museum pieces. I'm curious if anybody saw the production of West Side Story that Gerald Freedman mounted a couple of years ago and what they thought of that. Did he retain every aspect Robbins's direction or was he able to inject some of his own vision in to it?

I guess the question we need to ask is where do we draw the line between a production being a new production or merely a remount when it comes to shows such as West Side Story and A Chorus Line?

[ljay889]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 11:01pm

^ The new WSS is NOT a complete replica of the original though. It's just the same choreography. Though many wish Robbin's staging was used. It's not the same situation as ACL.
Updated On: 9/2/09 at 11:01 PM

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/1/09 at 11:14pm

That's kind of what I was getting at ljay. The choreography being changed but still billed as "recreated" is not right, I agree with all of those complaining about that. It's those who rightly or wrongly feel that every aspect of Robbins's direction should be retained that I question. I also have to question whether they would feel so vehemently against the direction at the end of the show if it had been a different director who was not seen as having a such a huge personal vendetta against Robbins.

That being said, personally I do agree that the everybody standing around with their thumbs up their butts ending is not nearly as effective. I'm just not sure that it needs to be so slavishly recreated from the original to work.

That's also why I'm curious as to what anybody thought of Freedman's staging at NCSA in '07, if anybody saw it. The head of our musical theatre department at my undergrad was a student of his back in the day and he offered a lot of insight when we did the show some years ago. I know our production was definitely paced faster than many others. It probably would have been even faster except that the music director was a student of Bernstein's back in the day, and there was only so fast that he would take "Lennie's" score.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/2/09 at 1:08am

It's those who rightly or wrongly feel that every aspect of Robbins's direction should be retained that I question.

I'm not saying that Arthur should have retained every aspect of Robbins's direction. I'm saying that what Arthur chose to replace it with, in each instance, failed.

The 1980 Broadway production was a "slavish revival"--look up some of my old posts on exactly how slavish it was--and it ended up a little dull.

This current revival was a boneheaded re-envisioning.

Perhaps Gerald Freedman's 50th anniversary production was the happy medium. Freedman had been Robbins's assistant on the original production in 1957 and has directed it many times ever since.

Updated On: 9/2/09 at 01:08 AM

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 9/2/09 at 9:12am

You were in an Equity production in college?

It was an Equity Showcase, off-off-Broadway, and I ASMed it. Maybe the rules are different for a showcase or maybe he assumed and didn't bother to check, I don't know. It never occurred to me to question him until now.

Please don't tell me that you forgotten how A Chorus Line ends.

No, I didn't "forgotten." But at least the closing number is a chance for the audience to applaud the actors and recognize their hard work. I don't remember whether the revival had traditional bows, but I guess I considered the closing number a kind of curtain call.

Updated On: 9/2/09 at 09:12 AM

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 9/2/09 at 11:06am

"I also have to question whether they would feel so vehemently against the direction at the end of the show if it had been a different director who was not seen as having a such a huge personal vendetta against Robbins."

Not at all. I've only come to dislike Arthur and his vendetta through the changes he's made to the show, not vice-versa.

The whole should-every-aspect-of-the-show-stay-the-same debate...my opinion is something can be changed if it can be improved upon. The problem is there's not much in Robbins' original choreography (and especially in Bernstein's score for the record) that can be improved. Every decision made in this production that was different from the original has diminished the show.

But then again...I'll use the score as my example, as that is what I'm more familiar with...the entire score of WSS is so connected...through its use of musical elements and certain keys that were chosen...the way the musical elements come into the songs (for example: one of the elements is major and minor triads...think of the opening to the jet song...becomes the melody of "A Boy Like That" - "broth-er" and "oth-er.")...the score is so complete and connected, like a detailed story, that if you changed even one thing, it could take away from the connections and cohesiveness of the whole. Perhaps the same is true of the original direction -- one minor change can damage the chain.

Updated On: 9/2/09 at 11:06 AM

[LadyDramaturg2]

Posted: 9/2/09 at 2:07pm

I can?t believe that no one?s complained about changing the lyrics in the Quintet to Spanish. The opening is a duet (Jets, Sharks) in canon form. The lyric-mirroring:

The Jets are gonna have their day tonight
The Sharks are gonna have their way tonight

We?re gonna hand ?em a surprise tonight
We?re gonna cut ?em down to size tonight

is of whole cloth with the Music; to translate the Sharks? lyrics into Spanish in a song like this, where the counterpoint is designed to so strongly echo the previous line demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of music and of song construction, of dramatic tension, ?

I?m still shaking my head. It?s amateur time.