For more than 60 years, productions of West Side Story have been obliged to follow the blueprint laid out by the director and choreographer Jerome Robbins on Broadway in 1957. By rights, such step-by-step reproduction should have been a recipe for deadly theatre, but as a philosophy, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has served the musical well. Things are changing, however, and with new versions planned by Ivo van Hove and Steven Spielberg, the Romeo-and-Juliet story of love among the warring Jets and Sharks is being reassessed.
First off the blocks is the Royal Exchange’s outgoing artistic director Sarah Frankcom who, with choreographer Aletta Collins, has fashioned an exhilarating production that is neither slavish nor disrespectful to the original. Collins takes a smart-but-casual approach, honouring the modernist gestures of Robbins while giving leeway to the movements of her assured young ensemble. By dint of performing in the round, the patterns become circular where once they were head-on, the audience turned into a ring of onlookers gawping at a knife-crime tragedy.
There’s still something too wholesome about these inner-city hoodlums (this is not The Wire), but Fernando Mariano and Michael Duke bring enough danger and malevolence to the gang leaders Bernardo and Riff to make the racial tensions feel authentic. Meanwhile, Collins turns the dancing from peacock displays of sexuality to signs of violent intent. When the knives come out, the stakes feel high.
What matters most, of course, are Tony and Maria, whose romance in the hands of Andy Coxon and Gabriela Garcia is as sweet as it is spontaneous. Coxon is the clean-cut boy next door who seems to grow taller as he is possessed by the swelling strains of Maria, one of many musical highlights. Garcia has a winning combination of innocence and mischievousness, humour and passion – her voice giving the show an astonishing operatic lift. Jocasta Almgill gives another standout performance as Maria’s confidante Anita.
Best of all is the music, with Richard Brooker’s superb sound design giving breadth and depth to Jason Carr’s excellent band performing in an adjacent sound booth but seeming to be right in front of us.
At the Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 25 May.
