Happy Birthday WEST SIDE STORY! 50 years old and still one of the most vibrant shows you will see onstage.

It crossed my mind as I sat watching the production at Sadler's Wells last night how odd that the show's longevity has been assured thanks to the film but how to appreciate it's mastery you really have to see it where it was written to be performed... on a stage. The show is one of the rare times when four theatrical greats collaborated - and it worked: Leonard Bernstein's excellent score, Arthur Laurents' lean book, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut as a lyricist and Jerome Robbins' ground-breaking choreography.

Of course no genre-changing show 50 years old can still retain all it's cutting edge. The hipster-slang of the Jets does make you chew your bottom lip occasionally (more of this later) and Robbins' choreography - although still great to watch - has been copied so often down the years that it holds no surprises and you quickly notice repetitions in the steps - I lost count of the times we see this step - although I will admit it's quite an iconic move for this show.My own relationship with the piece goes back to the mid-60s seeing what I guess must have been a reissue of the film with my Mum and a friend of hers at the good old Gaumont in Notting Hill Gate. All I can remember of the experience was the two of them crying at the end... so I started blubbing because they were - I've always been suggestible.

We used to have the soundtrack l.p. at home which had a full synopsis with the songs in brackets punctuating the action and remember being fascinated by how easy it was to actually follow the story through the songs. The essence of a good musical, certainly of a show with Sondheim lyrics.

Until last night the only time I had actually seen it on stage was in the mid-80s when a production from Leicester Haymarket played at Her Majesty's for a year before that theatre was written off as the home of PHANTOM. I remember being surprised at the differences between the film, being charmed by the lovely Jan Hartley as Maria and mightily fucked-off at the jabbering party of German students behind me.

So now it's playing a near-sold out run at Sadler's Wells to celebrate it's 50th birthday. It has the slight ponceyness of having two performers playing Tony, Maria and Anita on different nights - something that would have never happened with Larry Kert, Carol Lawrence and Chita Rivera in 1957, so what does that say about today's performers? We had Scott Sussman as Tony who was okay on the big notes but faded in the quieter ones, Elisa Cordova was a fine Maria - such a difficult role - and the star of the show was Oneika Phillips who was a fiery, fiesty Anita. She tore it up during AMERICA and, in a cast that puts it's dancing before it's singing, she also had great diction. Her scene towards the end when, assaulted by the Jets, she is the catalyst for the last tragic act was excellently played. Leo Ash Evens and Marco Santiago both did enough with Riff and Bernardo but a bit more would have helped define the characters better.As I said the chorus seem to have been picked more for their dancing ability than for their voices but I particularly liked the sonic overload of the QUINTET which captures the tense, febrile mood before the Rumble with the Jets, the Sharks, Anita, Tony and Maria all anticipating the coming night. Paul Gallis' set design has been criticised by some critics but I thought it's two moving skeletal tenement blocks with projections of b/w 1950s NY as backdrop was quite atmospheric and a special mention must be made of Peter Halbsgut's excellent lighting, vivid and dramatic. The score sounded great too under the baton of Donald Chan - achingly yearning in the ballads and vibrantly alive in the dance routines. The production will be touring the UK for the rest of 2008 into 2009 so I strongly recommend you to see it if it comes your way.It's natural that with four great creative forces behind a show that in the 50 years since it's inception that disparate views have arisen - both Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim dislike the film due it's literal translation to film - it's one thing to see the Jets and Sharks dancing around a stage, another to see them doing it on a NY sidewalk in broad daylight. Sondheim has never been particularly keen on the show citing it's one-dimensional characters and applying self-criticism to his Broadway debut lyrics. His dislike of I FEEL PRETTY is legendary - although Bernstein liked it! Sondheim maintains the clever multiple rhymes within the song are too sophisticated for Maria's character.
Personally I think he is too harsh on himself and the show - a bemused Leonard Bernstein once said that once Sondheim disliked something nothing could change him - but I do agree with him on one point. He always felt the Jets songs COOL and GEE OFFICER KRUPKE were misplaced in the show and they are. To have them stop and perform the comic KRUPKE after the trauma of their leader's death is a bit odd. The film however transposes the songs to better effect so COOL is sung by the new leader of the gang trying to calm his friends nerves. But then Arthur Laurents thinks KRUPKE is in the perfect place!! So go figure.

So the exciting news is that while this 50th Anniversary show is touring, a new Broadway revival is due there in Spring next year, the first for 29 years. Arthur Laurents will direct it fresh from directing the hit Broadway revival of GYPSY (he originally wrote the book for the show which reunited him with lyricist Sondheim and director/choreographer Robbins). He has said he is looking to update the dated areas of the book and the big news is that Sondheim is looking at reworking some of his lyrics.
I wonder if "Hobe" is still around? He reviewed WEST SIDE STORY's opening night in September 1957 for Variety and said "The show seems a doubtful prospect for record album popularity and would need considerable revision as film material... at a guess it might be a sensation in London" !