Somewhere I Feel Pretty in America

1957 would prove to be a good year for Broadway. The Music Man, Carousel and Brigadoon all opened that year, but I think the show that would come to change the face of musical theatre the most when it came to how music and dancing are used to tell a story is West Side Story. In the September 27, 1957 edition of the New Herald Tribune, journalist Walter Kerr wrote in his review of opening night:  "The radioactive fallout from West Side Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning." (Source:  Saturday Evening Post)

I think I understand a little of what Mr. Kerr must have meant by "radioactive fallout." I saw a production of West Side Story last year, almost 60 years since it's opening night, and still can't think about it without getting teary-eyed. What is it about this show that causes such an emotional response?

One of the facets of musical theatre that continues to make it such a progressive art form is its ability to have those hard conversations. Race, abuse, addiction, mental health, even death - nothing is off limits if there is a rhythm attached to it or a song to sing about it. In the 1950s, nearly half a million immigrants from Puerto Rico had come to New York and racial tension was high.

So how were four white guys gonna pull off telling this story? In the words of Stephen Sondheim:  "I've never been poor and I've never even known a Puerto Rican." Well here's how:

• Choreographer Jerome Robbins (who I highlighted in an earlier post) visited a high school dance in Harlem to study their dancing and then during rehearsals kept the respective gangs separate so that that when they met at the dance, the real-life tension was high. (Source:  The Guardian) Pretty method, but effective.
• Lyricist Stephen Sondheim showed his proficiency at underwriting - something he learned from his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. This was quite early in his career and what a start! "The whole point is to underwrite not overwrite because music is so rich an art itself. Poetry makes, generally, very poor lyrics unless you're dealing with a certain kind of show. It's too allusive, that's not what you want." (Source:  The Guardian)
• According to this article from History.com, the original name for this retelling of Romeo and Juliet was called East Side Story and would've focused on tension been the Catholics and Jews of the Lower East Side, but the brilliant playwright Arthur Laurents feared it would come across as "schmaltzy." So West Side Story was born and along with it came the Jets and Sharks. 
• Composer Leonard Bernstein provided West Side Story with some of the most dense, most catchy and most varied music heard on Broadway at the time. History.com states:  "Bernstein's score as a whole was so difficult that when Columbia Records executives initially considered a Broadway cast recording, they wanted to pass."

So perhaps it's just a perfect amalgamation of research, dedication and hard work that brings tears to my eyes, but I think it's something more. I think that this creative team stumbled on a story that, for better or worse, was incredibly relevant then and continues to be so. Sometimes we want to see the stories that don't always end happy because that's life, but we can all learn to have hope like Tony. Passion like Anita. And to love like Maria.









Here are some additional interesting resources I found during this week's search:

• WNYC radio story on what was going on in the lives of the creators of West Side Story 
• Library of Congress West Side Story: Birth of a Classic Exhibition - notes from auditions, letters Bernstein wrote to his wife and music he jotted down and original production photos.
• New York Public Library - West Side Story Moving Pictures (like the one above)