Director has created a grittier production
Ken Cazan makes a point of repeating a kind of alert to potential attendees of Central City Opera’s new production of “West Side Story”: Don’t expect to see the musical staged as it was in the famous 1961 film.
The well-respected stage director, who is back for the sixth time with the company, promises a production that is darker and closer to the reality that young people experienced in the tough neighborhoods of New York City’s Upper West Side in the 1950s.
“I think it’s grittier,” he said. “I think it’s truer to the roots of who these people are.”
While Central City’s decision to present a musical might cause consternation among some opera die-hards, more and more companies are including Broadway masterworks as part of their regular offerings.
“It’s an incredible challenge and just thrilling to be doing something with an opera company that isn’t opera, although of operatic proportions for sure,” said Cazan, who has devoted a considerable portion of his career to musicals.
Gangs little changed
He and the performers have delved into the characters, exploring gang dynamics, which are little different now than they were 50 years ago, as well as the economic disparities, sometimes based on ethnicity, which run through the story.
At the same time, Cazan is bringing some of his own life experiences to bear on the production, including a six- month residency in 2000 at a pilot school for at-risk students, many from troubled families marred by violence.
“I think we’re just trying to make it a little more real, that the characters aren’t generic and stereotypical,” he said. “It’s hard when dance is the main form of communication in the piece to keep the characters tough and edgy, but we’re working very hard on it.”
To create the scenery appropriate for this more intense take on “West Side Story,” Cazan turned to up-and-coming designer Cameron Anderson. The two worked together previously on a production at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
“The concept was to create a world for ‘West Side Story’ that was new and abstract but still really felt like ‘West Side Story’ and like New York,” she said.
For inspiration, Anderson turned to a photograph she found of a wall that was left standing after a building in New York City was partially demolished. Still visible were parts of various rooms, with bits of wallpaper, bathroom tile and crumbling plaster.
“It was really this haunting and beautiful image,” Anderson said, “and (it) looked like a repository of all these memories and different lives of all the people who kind of live on top of each other of New York City.”
To convey that quality, she conceived a semi-abstract set centered on a large, imposing tenement wall, with harsh angles and fractured openings.
“The point of that was to be able to have a space that was very dominating and dark and overwhelming and spoke to the fissures and rifts in society in the 1950s and now,” she said.
Set transforms
If that sounds bleak, Anderson hastens to add that the set is also designed to transform at times into a space with a brighter, more hopeful feel and thus convey the gamut of emotions contained in the musical.
Like choreographer Daniel Pelzig and others working on the production, she faced the hurdle of fitting the scenery onto the Central City Opera House’s unusually compact stage, with a stage opening that is just 25 feet wide.
“There’s something about the theater that has an openness to it, so it’s really, I don’t think, going to feel claustrophobic,” Anderson said. “It was a challenge, but, in the end, I think it has really shaped the production in a wonderful way.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or macmillan@denverpost.com
