When composer Leonard Bernstein was contemplating ideas for the “West Side Story” score, he recalled driving on the Henry Hudson Parkway, missing an exit, and winding up under a huge causeway by the river near 125th Street. The location and the cacophonous sounds of Puerto Rican kids playing with their raucous shouts nailed the theme for him. His lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, was just starting out.
That causeway scene is in Gateway’s new production of “West Side Story,” thanks to the convincing Upper Manhattan sets from the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. And so is the young cast’s stunningly believable brashness and bravado. The show’s talented performers grab you from the get-go, with simmering mayhem in song and attitude, amazing balletic leaps and in-your-face movement. The Jets, white guys, led by Riff, and the Sharks, Puerto Ricans, headed by Bernardo, mesmerized the opening-night audience, a full house, right from the beginning.
The gangs’ gearing up for turf dominance while a member from each side is drawn to each other in a modern-day “Romeo and Juliet” romance, is rendered true, beautiful and violently from this wonderful cast. The Gateway has given us a gorgeously authentic production.
We’re introduced to the gangs with that famous lingering bluesy note and impatient snapping rhythm, as these tough boys express themselves with convincing force and menace in body stances and leaping moves. Wow!
Director/choreographer Vince Ortega, whose magic touches gifted past Gateway productions including “In the Heights,” stayed true to Jerome Robbins’s original direction and dance vision. Ortega is aided by associate director/choreographer Ashley Klinger, a Jerome Robbins devotee and fourth-generation ballet dancer. She is also the musical’s intimacy director.
Robbins was the show’s idea man and the results of Ortega’s intention, to be faithful to his work, are thrilling and explosive, as the dancing included several styles, among them athleticism and jazz. So, a big thanks to Ortega and Klinger as well as associate choreographer Bryan Ernesto Menjivar, who also plays Shark Juanito in the cast, for honoring that.
Jackson Hurt as the handsome Tony has the earnest, kind yearning of a young man trying to step away from the Jets, and his song, “Something’s Coming,” is a soaring, hopeful anthem with an intangible knowing that a good force is trying to break through.
After meeting Maria (Sabina Collazo) at the dance that night, both are drawn together by an invisible force.
Collazo, who has played Maria in past productions, is luminous as Maria, the innocent Shark family member, whose brother is Bernardo, the leader. Collazo’s lovely vulnerability and soprano voice, on the eager threshold of womanhood and finding love, is endearing.
You cheer for this couple.
The dance competition in the gym that night has both gangs dancing with partners, whirling freestyle, joyfully exuberant wearing colorful shirts, pants, skirts, dresses. Bernardo and Anita, Riff and Velma square off in an electrifying “Mambo.” This is the backdrop with Tony and Maria meeting for the first time.
After they kiss, Bernardo breaks them up and Tony searches for Maria past a jumble of buildings, calls out to her and climbs up her fire escape, emulating the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s story. Tony’s anthem, “Maria,” is a moving prayer of devotion, and “Tonight,” the duet between the couple, is incandescent. Both songs have gorgeous operatic qualities. Bernstein wanted to display their love as pure, spiritual emotions.
Carlos Jimenez plays Bernardo, a proud Puerto Rican and Anita’s boyfriend, who you can negotiate with to a point. And he’s tired of targeted names like the derogatory “spic,” old hatreds, and the nasty racism displayed by Lt. Schrank (Jesse Swimm). Bernardo doesn’t want to rumble in the gym, leaving the girls in his group to walk home alone. Ashton Lambert as Riff won’t back down, insistent to hold onto his territory. (Lambert is effectively tense and scary.) They agree to fight elsewhere.
Like life, there’s humor interspersed, as in the “America” dance scene with the Shark girls, Anita (Megan Elyse Fulmer), Rosalia (Samara DeCastro), Francisca (Alexis Papaleo), Estrella (Lily Mendoza), Consuela (Manuela “Mango” Agudelo), Margarita (Angelina Didea), vamping, posing, pirouetting, flashing colorful crinolines for emphasis, giving the song their all, comparing life in Puerto Rico with the advantages of living in… America.
Later on, Fulmer, as the passionately amazing spitfire Anita, broken after being accosted by the Jets, is riveting.
The “Gee Officer Krupke” scene, with the Jets addressing the local policeman with feigned respect and hijinks, is hilarious. The Jets mix it up in humor, diss each other, sing sometimes in falsetto, of the sordid societal backgrounds influencing their lives to the local beat cop (Manny Erias) while proclaiming their innocence after the terrible rumble they just took part in.
Bill Carmichael plays Doc, the benevolent soda shop owner who tries to steer both gangs to saner ways.
This entire cast is seamless in their portrayals. (They must have rehearsed in their sleep.)
Cheers for the orchestra, led by Andrew Hail Austin (keys 1) with associate music director Jake Turski (keys 2) with musicians on trumpet, trombone, two reeds, bass and drums. They tackle Bernstein’s symphonically discordant and stunningly beautiful score with complex rhythms, leading up to impending savagery, tenderness and poignancy brilliantly.
Arthur Laurents wrote the show’s original story and it is a profound one. There are lessons to be learned, along with the beautiful music and acting.
It’s playing in Bellport to May 31 at www.thegateway.org.
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