West Side Story - review
Apr. 27th, 2009 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today, a friend of ours went to see West Side Story and we had brunch with him before our show - Guys & Dolls. We've been wanting to have a discussion about West Side Story with folks (and me my post on here) about the show. I didn't enjoy it as much as I had wanted or expected to because of a lot of reasons. Our friend sent us his brief review this evening stating that it was pretty good in his opinion, but that they must have changed since our show's date - a LOT before it actually opened on Broadway. We had seen the show two days before our departure to the Bahamas and that was the night that I went to the emergency room for 5 hours, so we didn't have time to sit down and compose our WSS review. Matt just wrote out his thoughts to our friend, and I thought it best to come from him what we post (he wanted to write the review with me online here!!). Plus, he appeared as Arab in his high school production of West Side Story.
From Matthew:
"They must have changed a LOT since it opened! I'm sure they are still the queeniest gang members that were ever cast! Not Jets or Sharks, just Twinks and Chiquitas.
Backs to the audience
1) And WOW - someone must have gotten on top of that stage direction, because ALL I SAW was backs. I never saw Riff OR Tony's face when Riff was asking Tony to show up at the dance (Tony was cleaning DOC's sign on the ladder) before "Something's Coming", both of their backs were to the audience the ENTIRE SCENE.
2) There was a creepy red-headed kid that sang "Somewhere" - and sang half the song walking upstage with his back to the crowd.
3) No one actually saw Bernardo kill Riff because all the gang members were standing around them in a circle with their backs blocking the view of the audience. The same thing happened when Tony killed Bernardo. Same thing when Chino killed Tony. Literally, I can't remember all of them!
Re-writes (and SPANISH??)
1) Tony spoke with an old-timey-radio voice that sounded like Jim Carrey doing a Jimmy Stuart impression UNTIL he started singing later.
2) Everything was in Spanish, well, about 1/3 of the dialogue! I wanted to walk out 3 times, but the tickets were a gift from Joey, Steve's best friend, and he was sitting right next to me! This is what happened:
- Every time there were ONLY Spanish people in the scene, they spoke only Spanish. For example, the entire scene leading up to "America" - and then the entire musical number "America". Together, that is more than 15 minutes of NO ENGLISH on stage. I almost walked out for the first time. Thing is, one of the subtexts in the dialogue concerns how much they want to be American and put aside their Hispanic culture (and language).
- All of Maria and Bernardo's confrontation at that dance at the gym.
- Half of "One Hand, One Heart"
- Maria's, Anita's and the Sharks portions of the "Tonight" quintet. So, 2 parts were English
- The scene leading up to and including "I Feel Pretty" was completely in Spanish. I almost walked out for the second time.
- The entire bedroom scene leading up to and including "A Boy Like That" and "I Have a Love" were all in Spanish for a total of about 20 minutes until Lt. Shrank walked in. When I realized that they re-wrote the words to "I Have a Love" so that it would rhyme in Spanish, I almost walked out again!!
3) Also, in the confrontation between Anita and the Jets in Doc's Store, the play had the scene ending with some heavy sexual harassment - but in this production - they really escalated the re-write of the scene to an actual attempted rape, and that was ABHORRENT!!
4) The other re-write that I hated was that A-Rab and Baby John, the two biggest "followers" out of all of the Jets were somehow too "disgusted" to participate in the "Officer Krupke" number(????!!). In the original play AND the movie, both A-Rab and Baby John have the two best parts in that number! BLECH. All of a sudden, however, A-Rab is "back on board with the gang" when it comes to the attempted rape scene (described above).
I'm not even that much of a Broadway Queen, but the production we experienced was HORRIBLE! When we exited the theater, there was a huge crowd of people muttering that they couldn't understand anything, how much they hated the song versions, and how bad it was."
There you have it. Be forewarned, it might not have changed that much, but it could still be better than when we saw it. We'll not waste more money on it, though.
From Matthew:
"They must have changed a LOT since it opened! I'm sure they are still the queeniest gang members that were ever cast! Not Jets or Sharks, just Twinks and Chiquitas.
Backs to the audience
1) And WOW - someone must have gotten on top of that stage direction, because ALL I SAW was backs. I never saw Riff OR Tony's face when Riff was asking Tony to show up at the dance (Tony was cleaning DOC's sign on the ladder) before "Something's Coming", both of their backs were to the audience the ENTIRE SCENE.
2) There was a creepy red-headed kid that sang "Somewhere" - and sang half the song walking upstage with his back to the crowd.
3) No one actually saw Bernardo kill Riff because all the gang members were standing around them in a circle with their backs blocking the view of the audience. The same thing happened when Tony killed Bernardo. Same thing when Chino killed Tony. Literally, I can't remember all of them!
Re-writes (and SPANISH??)
1) Tony spoke with an old-timey-radio voice that sounded like Jim Carrey doing a Jimmy Stuart impression UNTIL he started singing later.
2) Everything was in Spanish, well, about 1/3 of the dialogue! I wanted to walk out 3 times, but the tickets were a gift from Joey, Steve's best friend, and he was sitting right next to me! This is what happened:
- Every time there were ONLY Spanish people in the scene, they spoke only Spanish. For example, the entire scene leading up to "America" - and then the entire musical number "America". Together, that is more than 15 minutes of NO ENGLISH on stage. I almost walked out for the first time. Thing is, one of the subtexts in the dialogue concerns how much they want to be American and put aside their Hispanic culture (and language).
- All of Maria and Bernardo's confrontation at that dance at the gym.
- Half of "One Hand, One Heart"
- Maria's, Anita's and the Sharks portions of the "Tonight" quintet. So, 2 parts were English
- The scene leading up to and including "I Feel Pretty" was completely in Spanish. I almost walked out for the second time.
- The entire bedroom scene leading up to and including "A Boy Like That" and "I Have a Love" were all in Spanish for a total of about 20 minutes until Lt. Shrank walked in. When I realized that they re-wrote the words to "I Have a Love" so that it would rhyme in Spanish, I almost walked out again!!
3) Also, in the confrontation between Anita and the Jets in Doc's Store, the play had the scene ending with some heavy sexual harassment - but in this production - they really escalated the re-write of the scene to an actual attempted rape, and that was ABHORRENT!!
4) The other re-write that I hated was that A-Rab and Baby John, the two biggest "followers" out of all of the Jets were somehow too "disgusted" to participate in the "Officer Krupke" number(????!!). In the original play AND the movie, both A-Rab and Baby John have the two best parts in that number! BLECH. All of a sudden, however, A-Rab is "back on board with the gang" when it comes to the attempted rape scene (described above).
I'm not even that much of a Broadway Queen, but the production we experienced was HORRIBLE! When we exited the theater, there was a huge crowd of people muttering that they couldn't understand anything, how much they hated the song versions, and how bad it was."
There you have it. Be forewarned, it might not have changed that much, but it could still be better than when we saw it. We'll not waste more money on it, though.