Theater is full of conceits, and that’s the reason we keep going back for more. Audiences know those star-crossed lovers on stage don’t really fall upon their daggers, that 225-pound sopranos are not truly withering away from consumption. It’s all pretend.
Ah, but when the pretending is good — that’s when we see art.
* * * musical
So, it’s logical to question a production of “West Side Story” that aims to add authenticity by having its Puerto Rican characters deliver some dialogue and lyrics in Spanish instead of the usual English. Why bother, really?
As long as the Sharks and the Jets are breaking out in song and battling it out via ballet moves, audiences will still need to suspend disbelief to get through the evening. And how.
And so it is with the version of “West Side Story” now unraveling at the Buell Theatre downtown. The language shakeup does nothing to make the work any grittier than it has been for half a century. The producers seem clueless, in fact, as to how emotionally or physically authentic musical theater can get in the 21st century (sit through “Next to Normal” or “Spring Awakening” if you want to see real).
That said, it doesn’t ruin things, either. This is a tight production of a classic play based on a classic play. The singing is sweet, the dancing is dead on, and the romance is sexy.
None of the fresh-faced actors carries tremendous charisma, but that’s just fine. This show’s stars remain its creators. It’s all in the credits here: book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Jerome Robbins.
The concept remains fresh, too: an update of “Romeo and Juliet” set in New York in the 1950s, with Shakespeare’s feuding families replaced by New York’s warring gangs. Here, we have a generation of immigrants-once-removed taking out their frustrations on immigrants newly arrived — the timing could not be better for a revival.
The tone could. There are moments when this production moves toward a contemporary edge that could make it more meaningful today. The frat boys on stage actually turn a bit menacing after a few murders take place. There’s a creepiness to the way they harass Doc, who owns the drugstore where they hang out. The number “Gee, Officer Krupke,” which can appear slapstick in some productions, comes off as a rich indictment of social institutions; the guys singing it crack us up, but there’s hurt in the way they mock the social institutions that emerged in the postwar era.
There is some sense to the translations, too, which are pulled off seamlessly by Lin-Manuel Miranda, having been overseen by Laurents himself, who directed this revival on Broadway in 2009 not long before he died. These are recent immigrants. It’s easy to think of them switching back and forth between English and Spanish as they banter among themselves.
The new words force some reconsideration of the dialogue, the music and the relationship between characters in the same way that a production of Shakespeare set, say, on the moon in the year 2020, would invite us to think again about the things we know.
But they get in the way, too. Folks new to the play may find some of the action hard to follow. Something is lost in terms of familiarity, as well; one of the most enjoyable things about a Broadway revival is being able to hum along (in your head, that is) to the songs you know.
This isn’t a landmark production, but it is solid, just different enough to make it new.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540 or rrinaldi@denverpost.com
