What was wrong with the West Side Story revival?- Page 2

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:13am

The thing is, everything positive that has been said about this production, except those who liked the Spanish, could be said about the original production. There was no gain here, just a lot of loss...

[Actor2]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:28am

Having only seen the recent revival, can someone please edify as to how the ending is different? Thanks.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 1:38am

So are you saying we should translate all of Kim's songs into Vietnamese to make Miss Saigon more 'realistic'?

[crewdude]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 3:23am

Number one- a 'Revival" is a REVIVAL not a re-imagining, not a reworking, not an updating, not a let's put in some spanish and try to some press so the hispanic audience will buy tickets. Don't screw with a classic.
Number two - the cast was a bunch of young punks that had no professionalism. They would call out at the drop of a hat. Oh sure, people on here would try to defend them saying 'it's a heavy dance show and there are a lot of injuries in a dance show.' But the fact is these kids were stupid enough to tell their friends and the crew that they were out because they "partied too hard", etc, etc. The audience gets sick and tired of maying to see a show and reams of paper come flying out of the Playbill with all the swings and understudies on covering all the outs. The show was in combo so much that you wondered sometimes if they would have to have sharks run off stage and come back on as jets in order to try to fill the stage.

[theaternut]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 3:57am

Yuck.. it was such a empty production. And the tour is not fairing any better. The review from when it played in LA just about sums it up.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/12/theater-review-west-side-story-at-the-pantages-theatre.html Updated On: 5/9/11 at 03:57 AM

[My Oh My]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 5:30am

I've seen both the original production (in an unbelievable 1997 national tour) and the current revival.

I've also seen an outdoor production done on the cheap but with an incredible orchestra, as well as a well-done regional, and the same tour of the original production when it went non-equity in 1998. The only one that had it all and stands out in my mind is the '97 tour.

The current tour is similar in many ways but it just so happens the things that ARE different now, were so much more effective before.

For one: the music. THE MUSIC. Nobody can deny the sheer power of that incredible score, and the sound of a standard sized orchestra playing it is itself a reason to see the show live. Sadly, the current tour's L.A. engagement back in Nov./Dec. featured a slimmed down variation of the score and those thrilling, brassy moments were reduced to squawking. The '97 original production tour had a 30+ member strong group of local musicians in the pit. The stage could've been bare and that still would have been better than this current tour.

The Spanish was OK, but I knew what they were saying. I felt sorry for those who didn't have a clue. It was a gimmick. What was far worse to me was that most of the actors playing the Sharks obviously did NOT know Spanish at all and had very heavy accents. Well, so much for realism!!

Thankfully, most of the dumbed down choreography had been chucked and restored to the original moves for the tour. Still, the choreography I saw in the '97 tour was electric. I'll never forget Natacia Diaz spinning in unison with the Shark girls, swishing that iconic purple dress about with gusto--an image forever burned in my mind!

I wasn't a fan of the added lewdness on display in the revival. I'm no prude, but it was unnecessary. Why does going for "modern" also usually include something trashy? The current 25th ann. Les Mis tour, for example, features a couple doing the nasty in the background during "Master of the House." WTF!? How is that an improvement? It only adds distraction. The same can be said for that skanky cum gag during "Officer Krupke." Ewww.

The choreography was obviously "butched-up" for the opening number. I was at once relieved that I wouldn't be forced to watch tough gang members prance about daintily, but was soon wishing to see just that after realizing the revised choreography also made the lot look as if they had to take an urgent wiz.

These are really nit-picks and, no, it wasn't a train wreck.

But in comparison to what I saw in '97, it left much to be desired.

[ReggieonBway]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 5:55am

I never really thought about it, but being bilingual probably was a major factor in how much I enjoyed the revival. For me, listening to what was changed and translating it back from Lin's spanish lyrics as quickly as I could was involving.

That said, I really doubt the majority of the audience noticed anything wrong with Karen's dancing. We do, of course, because we've all seen hundreds of shows and quite a few of us are performers ourselves - but I think her Tony speaks for itself in regards to how the audience recieved it.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 6:27am

But the problem is: she was the best thing in a mediocre production.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 7:27am

What was wrong with the West Side Story revival?

Arthur Laurents was what was wrong with the West Side Story revival.

[zamedy]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 8:40am

My Oh My - very insightful post, but slightly misleading. Don't say you saw the 'original production' (in the 1997 national tour). The original production was done forty years earlier, in 1957. I thought you made a typo.

As for the post about all the 'young punks' calling out.. I don't know how much truth there really is to that. But if it's even partially true, that's unfortunate. You've earned the opportunity of a lifetime to be part of one of the greatest musicals of all time on Broadway and you treat it with such a lack of respect? Appalling (if true.. although I think that post was an exaggeration at best).

[trentsketch]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 8:43am

My favorite moment in the production was the "I Had a Love/A Boy Like That." It thought it was a great way to show the progression of Maria's character using Anita's unyielding use of Spanish as a foil to her newly awoken understanding of the world. I didn't like it as much in "America" but I thought the new lyrics were used to very well in "I Feel Pretty." "America" is all wordplay, so isolating large swathes of the audience from that was a mistake. "I Feel Pretty" is about the joy and emotion in a young girl's life and was staged in such a way to get the meaning across even if you didn't understand all the lyrics.

And all of those issues of translation could have been solved by putting supertitles or subtitles on the stage. The Spanish translations were fun and clever and that was lost on the casual Broadway audience that didn't speak the language.

[My Oh My]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 9:23am

"My Oh My - very insightful post, but slightly misleading. Don't say you saw the 'original production' (in the 1997 national tour). The original production was done forty years earlier, in 1957. I thought you made a typo."

Hmm. I didn't think I had to be so specific on this forum, lol. I figured most people would know I meant I saw a tour that reproduced the original 1957 production in its entirety, right down to the original lighting design, costumes, set, direction, and so on.

But you're right, I DID say "original production" without elaborating, which can be misleading, I suppose. :S

It was a pleasant surprise though, mostly because the ads were so misleading--they featured a sexed-up Maria, wearing a tight, black mini-skirt and being practically groped by a black tank-top wearing Tony. It gave the impression it was to be an updated or modernized version. I pretty much died from happiness when that curtain went up and saw before me what I had seen in photos of the original production growing up. It was an unexpected trip back in time.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 10:16am

Well if you didn't speak Spanish and didnt know the music, you had no clue what they were singing about for starters.

This was a huge point for me. Every time they started speaking Spanish my mind would start to wander because I had no idea what they were saying.

Matt Hydzik was an excellent Tony.

Agreed. The first time I saw it and Matt C's Tony died I had no emotion. It was like "Oh well - he's dead". When Matt H's Tony died I did have tears in my eyes.


Maria held Tony's body like a Pieta while the rest of the cast stood away from her and watched while the music played.

That was killer. You lose so much by having Tony just laying there. You can argue about crime scenes being intact all you want but this is a musical - not real life. (Spoiler for those who have be never seen it. Are there any of those left?) Having the Sharks & Jets come together to carry Tony off stage symbolized them realizing how stupid and wrong they've been. By just standing back it feels like no one learned anything.


I don't think the complaints of "I didn't understand it," given the translation sheets in the programs

There were translation sheets? I saw the show once in DC and twice in NYC and don't remember a translation sheet. In DC they had TV's on either side of the stage with surtitles (which was highly distracting). But I have no recollection of seeing a translation sheet.

Updated On: 5/9/11 at 10:16 AM

[lizliz]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 10:31am

My issue with the Spanish was that I felt that it took all the nuances out of the scenes with the Puerto Rican characters (who are underdeveloped to begin with), so people who didn't speak Spanish really only got the general gist of what was going on, and it painted the characters in very broad strokes. Bernardo is ANGRY! Anita is LUSTY! Chico is SHY, and then he is ANGRY! Like a lot of people, I'm familiar enough with the show that I knew what they were saying (and really, she could have sung in Swahili and I'd still be hearing "I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!" in my head), but I felt it didn't help the show at all.

And I felt it was a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that the Spanish didn't really work that they made sure that they broke the conceit to have the characters speak English to each other when a) someone had to say something really important to the plot, or b) someone had to say something funny. Why wasn't "America" in Spanish? Because most people wouldn't have laughed.

Like others have said, it felt like Laurents made changes for the sake of making changes. Not to speak ill of the dead, but it would have been better if he'd worked out his issues with Jerry Robbins in therapy than on the stage of the Palace Theatre.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 10:38am

I saw the production 3 times in DC. I didn't like that the dream ballet was dropped. I thought the role of "Kiddo" was unneccesary and actually a distraction. I liked Karen Olivo's performance, but sorry she wasn't able to execute the original America choreography. The number should dazzle, but in this instance it did not. Hated the costumes and hair as they were not period specific. Most of all, hated the ending. Tony's death had absolutely no impact whatsoever (IMO).

What I liked: The Quintet. The spanish was most effective in this number, though I didn't mind it in I Feel Pretty and A Boy Like That.

There were some minor changes made in the 3 times I saw it in DC, but I was really expecting something phenominal by the 3rd time. Wishful thinking.

[shomeika]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:00pm

I saw it on Broadway, and thought it was lackluster. We were on 8th row and *could not hear*. Biggest problem. Previous shows in that theatre (Aida, etc.) had excellent sound.

A couple of performers popped...but overall....we thought it bland compared to the other three shows we saw that weekend.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:11pm

Not to speak ill of the dead, but it would have been better if he'd worked out his issues with Jerry Robbins in therapy than on the stage of the Palace Theatre.

Please. Feel free. You're among friends.

The truth of the matter is that Arthur mounted the revival as a well-planned act of revenge. He always resented that what made West Side truly unique was the connection between the music and the staging, the collaboration of his old friend, Leonard Bernstein, with his old enemy, Jerome Robbins. It was not the book that made it special. In fact, it was the book that sank it in several places.

So Arthur planned out a revival that would minimize or remove as much of the beautiful interplay between score and staging as he could extricate.

First he had to wait for a few people to die: Jerry, obviously, and Lenny, but also Harry Kraut, Lenny's longtime shark of a business manager, and Floria Lasky, Jerry longtime shark of a lawyer.

With the sharks out of the way, Arthur went in for the kill. He used the truncated ballet the Bernstein organization had approved for the New York City Ballet's West Side Story Suite, which Jerry had used in Jerome Robbins's Broadway. This shortened version omitted the Nightmare section from the end of the ballet, leaving it with no narrative, just pure dance.

Arthur had always hated that the middle of the second act dwelt for so much time in a dance world. To get Jerry's goat he had added a line to Gypsy, in which Tessie says derisively of Mazeppa's dance: "Cut the ballet. It stinks anyway."

Next, Arthur removed the wordless procession from the end of the show, which can be seen in the final moments of the movie. The reason for this was bogus. He said it was not realistic that the police would allow the body to be removed...as if anything else in the show was "realistic" and as if that mattered.

Then he saw an opportunity with the character of Anita, which had always been defined by two dances in the first act and two dramatic scenes in the second. In the Robbins/Bernstein vision, Anita's spectacular dancing in the Dance at the Gym and "America" would bring the audience to its feet in the first act, and then she would seal the deal with dramatic acting in the "Boy Like That" scene and the rape scene. Every woman who ever played the role on Broadway or in a touring production has been a standout triple-threat: Chita Rivera, Rita Moreno, Barbara Luna, Debbie Allen. The scenes in the second act are near-melodramatic with fever-pitch emotions. No woman who ever played the part failed to score in those scenes. The trick was to find a woman who could do that and also accomplish the difficult and exciting Peter Gennaro choreography for the two first-act numbers.

Arthur realized that if he cast an actress who could sing and dance rather than a dancer who could act and sing, the balance of the show would shift from music/dance to spoken word. And because the two scenes in the second act are so dramatic, she would leave the audience appropriately wowed--and more wowed by his book scenes than by Jerry and Peter's choreography.

But what Arthur did not realize was that by removing those moments of what the French call "frisson" from the first-act dance numbers, he also was making the show exponentially less exciting.

Then he made a casting error, by casting a Tony with the wrong kind of voice. Again, Arthur did not realize that the way his own show is constructed, there are two songs in Act One, almost back-to-back, that provide the audience another kind of frisson: this time the thrill of a strong high male voice, similar to the thrill Italian operas provide with tenor arias.

I don't think he was out to minimize Lenny's score. I think he did this out of ignorance as to how the show worked and a tunnel-vision of focusing primarily on the book scenes and the acting, which he thought he could make better (and "tougher") than any previous production.

So through acts of vindictive artistic vandalism toward Robbins's choreography and staging and acts of neglect toward Bernstein's score, Arthur was what was wrong with the recent West Side Story revival.

May he rest in peace. And may his improvements be removed.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:12pm

it was lackluster

So, it lacks in luster?

Updated On: 5/9/11 at 12:12 PM

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:13pm

It was so sanitized to the point of boredom. The costumes by GAP and the fact that once Olivo won her Tony she peaced out.

Natalie Cortez was amazing though.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:45pm

Why wasn't "America" in Spanish? Because most people wouldn't have laughed.

No, it was because the song was about how much Anita yearned to be an American. It would be out of character to sing that song in Spanish. Did you notice how the character of Anita spoke English the whole time until Bernardo died and she was overcome with grief and hopelessness? That was a very deliberate choice.

The revival had a lot of flaws and was generally disappointing, but there's no need to invent flaws.

Updated On: 5/9/11 at 12:45 PM

[sondheimfan2]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 12:53pm

PayJoey - you never cease to amaze me. Thank you for sharing your insight. I don't post here much, but I read several times a day. I love your posts.
Updated On: 5/9/11 at 12:53 PM

[shomeika]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 1:17pm

<
So, it lacks in luster? >>

Yes. Very much so.
LACKLUSTER
: lacking in sheen, brilliance, or vitality : dull, mediocre
— lackluster noun

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 1:33pm

I found it rather bland and lifeless. To me, Olivo was the only source of energy in the production (though I was baffled by her VERY contemporary hairstyle). The Dance at the Gym was thrilling to watch, but the rest of the production was so drab and the direction lacked chemistry, especially in Somewhere, the ballet and the finale. I couldn't blame it on the actors as even some of the blocking prevented their connection with each other.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 2:14pm

Yes. Very much so.
LACKLUSTER
: lacking in sheen, brilliance, or vitality : dull, mediocre
— lackluster noun

You know what didn't lack in luster? Curtains.

[hyperbole_and_a_half]

Posted: 5/9/11 at 2:21pm

I enjoyed the Spanish translations. Sondheim has been pretty upfront about his displeasure with his lyrics throughout WSS, particularly for the ESL characters; having them sing in their mother tongue allows them to be a bit more naturally poetic (I.e., "It's alarming / How charming / I feel" is a bit too sophisticated in its English-ness for Maria, but she could realistically say the equivalent in Spanish).

Also, the juxtaposition of the Spanish and English in A Boy Like That/I Have A Love was thrilling (particularly when viewed in conjunction with the all-Spanish I Feel Pretty, where Maria demonstrates that Spanish is her language of choice where possible): not only does Maria rebuke Anita's warnings/admonitions about Tony, she does it in English. This elevated a subtext that is often glossed-over in WSS productions and made the revival Maria a bit more complicated than the typical (and generic) starry-eyed Puerto Rican Julliette.

Other than that, I don't have many good things to say about the revival, including the direction, the casting, the design, the unfortunate de-emphasis of choreography and musical staging, etc., which this thread more than adequately addresses.