It’s often hard to believe that the landmark musical “West Side Story” is nearly 65 years old. When the show debuted on Broadway back in 1957, with its cutting-edge score by Leonard Bernstein (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), it was touted as a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” (conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins and adapted by scenarist Arthur Laurents), a slice of then-contemporary life involving warring gangs and star-crossed lovers on the mean urban streets of a multiracial, working-class Manhattan.
Revived on Broadway several times since then, and immortalized on screen in director Robert Wise’s classic 1961 masterpiece (to say nothing of Steven Spielberg’s arguably needless remake last year), “West Side Story” has always remained a period piece about the social conflicts and issues of its specific time and place. Through the years, though, the show has also managed to retain a certain energetic vibrancy, at least with regard to some of its iconic musical numbers.
Until now, perhaps. Despite its typically overwhelming Broadway-scale production values, there’s nothing very artistically unique or valuable about City Springs Theatre’s lackluster production of “West Side Story,” with the exception of Ryan Belock’s remarkably elaborate projection design. Otherwise, the material is finally starting to not only show its age, but to feel it, as well.
Obediently directed by Daniel Kutner, the City Springs undertaking suffers a problem common to many iterations of famous old works of musical theater — rather slavishly simulating what all of us have seen before and come to expect, instead of recreating the material in any meaningful or distinguishing way. Naturally, the plotline and songs are invariable, but there’s a sense here that everyone is just going through the motions, not badly per se, but only as if by rote.
From the opening “Prologue” number, and continuing through “The Dance at the Gym,” “America,” “Gee Officer Krupke” and other routines, for instance, City Springs’ resident choreographer Cindy Mora Reiser is content to basically copycat the original work of Robbins. Nevertheless, members of the company’s dancing ensemble give it their all.
Most of the dialogue scenes seem rushed, as though they were irrelevant or disposable, in the interest of getting back to the singing and dancing as quickly as possible. On a couple of occasions, music director Miles Plant (conducting a 16-piece orchestra) provides obtrusive background music to cue the next big song, reminiscent of how those awards shows will infringe on an acceptance speech in an effort to wrap up all the talking and play the winners off the stage.
Kutner’s hurried pace also undercuts whatever emotional investment we’re supposed to have for the ill-fated young lovers at the center of the story, the white Tony (a long-in-the-tooth Ben Jacoby) and the Puerto Rican Maria (Emma Heistand). That can be challenging enough, inasmuch as the co-stars barely generate a sufficient romantic spark or chemistry to begin with.
Credit: www.BenRosePhotography.com
Credit: www.BenRosePhotography.com
Faring better are Ethan Zeph as Riff, the head of the Jets gang, and Waldemar Quinones-Villanueva as Bernardo, who leads the rival Sharks. On opening weekend, understudy Chani Maisonet (stepping in for an injured Orianna Hilliard) acquitted herself nicely as Anita, Bernardo’s hot-blooded girlfriend — although she must not be the dancer Hilliard is, given how she stood on the sidelines while others did most of the heavier legwork during Anita’s “America” number.
And a final footnote: Now more than ever, in a current cultural climate that’s all about inclusion, diversity, equity and representation, it should be noted that some of the show’s casting is generally problematic. Not every actor playing a Puerto Rican character is actually Hispanic. Whatever your own individual attitude on that subject, it doesn’t bode especially well for the authenticity of City Springs’ upcoming production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s all-Latin “In the Heights” later this fall.
THEATER REVIEW
“West Side Story”
Through July 24. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; 2 p.m. Saturday (July 16). $48-$108. Byers Theatre (at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center), 1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs. 404-477-4365, cityspringstheatre.com.
Bottom line: Tired and uninspired, presented as if by rote.
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