Shark attack ... dancers from West Side Story. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian
So, West Side Story is coming back to Broadway in a new, bilingual production that will have the Sharks speaking Spanish? That's the news from the Rialto this week, as profferred by Arthur Laurents, book writer of the ground-breaking 1957 Broadway show and the man who, aged 91, will direct its return to Broadway. The laudable intention is to up the stakes of a show that can seem very white bread indeed, unless it is performed with a conviction that will now extend to the sounds of the musical's Hispanic characters speaking their own language.
The conceit, in turn, goes beyond mere gimmickry to tap into an audience demographic that has largely been left out of Broadway's ongoing orientation towards middle-aged women and gay men. Indeed, the Latino constituency is helping to make a hit out of this year's Tony-winning Best Musical, In the Heights, a show set in the largely Hispanic area of Washington Heights that at the same time is notably devoid of the quality of danger that Laurents wants to provide anew to West Side Story.
Those wanting their West Side Story "straight", as it were, can still experience the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim collaboration as it was premiered over half a century ago: a supreme Broadway artefact that wasn't aiming for documentary verisimilitude. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is currently readying their own, presumably more traditional production, while, closer to home, Sadler's Wells Theatre soon welcomes a touring production that aims to communicate the immediacy of the material - but in English.
Laurents's directorial take, meanwhile, raises provocative questions about theatrical authenticity. Should Broadway's forthcoming transfer of the Royal Court Theatre production of The Seagull, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, not do its bit by adopting Russian accents - or, better yet, hiring a few actual Russians, given the melting pot that is New York? And isn't it time after all these years that Les Mis gave us the goods in French - or maybe not, given that Victor Hugo's home country has been among the few places where this world-beating musical hasn't taken hold. For that matter, I don't recall too many Gallic sounds emanating from the Haymarket stage at the current Marguerite - though a shaven-headed Alexander Hanson, as the resident Nazi, is certainly to the Teutonic buzz cut born.
As always, the proof will lie in a production that as yet is an idea waiting to be put into practice. I'm encouraged by Laurents's commendably fierce directorial approach to another of his collaborations, Gypsy, which quite rightly won three Tony Awards last month and has been rumoured for a London transfer. As for the surtitles that this latest West Side Story will reportedly necessitate? Well, I doubt I'm the only one who thinks they should long ago have been put into use for the majority of musicals that are sung in English.
