The Great ‘West Side Story’ Debate
With the Steven Spielberg film coming soon, three
critics, a playwright and a theater historian weigh in on whether the musical
deserves a new hearing — and how.
Dec. 1,
2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/theater/west-side-story-steven-spielberg-movie.html
Since its
Broadway premiere in 1957, “West Side Story” — a musical based on “Romeo and
Juliet” and created by four white men — has been at once beloved and vexing.
The score,
featuring such Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim classics as “Somewhere” and
“Maria,” is considered one of the best in Broadway history. The cast album was
a No. 1 smash. The 1961 movie won best picture and nine other Oscars. The show
has been regularly revived, most recently on Broadway last year in a
short-lived radical rethinking by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove. And now,
this month, a movie remake by none other than Steven Spielberg.
And yet,
from the beginning, the show (directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins,
with a book by Arthur Laurents) has discomfited some audience members and
critics — for its violence, its mix of tones and, especially, for the way it
underscores stereotypes of Puerto Ricans as gang members. Not to mention that
the 1961 movie featured the white actress Natalie Wood playing the Latina role
of Maria.
Why does
“West Side Story” continue to have such a large cultural footprint? Should it?
Is it possible to be true to such richly emotional material and still be
responsive to our moment?
We asked
five experts to weigh in: Jesse Green, the chief theater critic at The New York
Times; Isabelia Herrera, a Times critic fellow; Carina del Valle Schorske, a
contributing writer at the Times Magazine and the author of a 2020 Times
Opinion piece challenging the show’s place in the culture; the Tony
Award-winning playwright Matthew López (“The Inheritance”); and Misha Berson,
the author of “Something’s Coming, Something Good: ‘West Side Story’ and the
American Imagination.”
They
gathered before seeing the new film and just before news broke that Sondheim,
the show’s lyricist and the last survivor from its creative team, had died at
91. Scott Heller, the interim editor of Arts & Leisure, kicked off the
conversation, and it got going quickly from there.
SCOTT
HELLER What stays with you about the first time you saw “West Side Story”? Or
the most memorable time?
JESSE GREEN
The first time I saw it was in a high school production featuring extremely
clumsy dancing, warbly singing and an all-white (non-Latinx) cast. Memorable,
but not in a good way. Luckily, I had already gotten to know it by then — from
the music.
MATTHEW
LÓPEZ My relationship to “West Side Story” is a bit unusual in that my father
was in the film as an extra. He’s clearly visible in the opening scene on the
playground, just after the prologue. When I was perhaps 7, my parents showed it
to me, and it was incredibly exciting to see my father at 14 years old. And it
was the first time I’d ever seen any kind of popular entertainment with Puerto
Rican characters. It was not until later that my relationship to the show
changed. I saw the revival in 2009 (my first time seeing it onstage), and I was
shocked at how thinly the Puerto Rican characters were drawn.
MISHA
BERSON I’m probably the one person here who saw the original — actually a
Broadway tour that came through Detroit when I was 9 years old. I went with my
dance class, and though it was something of a blur and I didn’t understand it
much, I was captivated by the dancing, the music, the energy and excitement of
the show. I became obsessed with it, but as an adult didn’t see another
vibrant, fully realized production until the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle did
an excellent revival in 2007.
ISABELIA
HERRERA Unfortunately, my memories are wrapped up in a microaggression that has
stayed with me since high school. My family is Dominican, from the city of
Santiago de los Caballeros, and I am likely one of the only kids of Dominican
descent who attended my high school. I remember when, in English class, a white
classmate reprimanded me for not having seen “West Side Story” at the time,
saying, “But aren’t you Puerto Rican?!”
CARINA DEL
VALLE SCHORSKE Ugh, Isabelia, that’s such a familiar story! In a messed-up way,
your classmate’s confusion makes sense, because the musical itself might just
as well be about Dominicans — it’s that general. I first saw “West Side Story”
on a VHS tape my mom and I rented from the public library when I was maybe 9 or
10. I grew up in California, away from my Puerto Rican family in Washington
Heights, so I thought I might find something out about my culture that I didn’t
know before. But nothing onscreen — beyond the latticework of fire escapes —
reminded me of the people or neighborhood I knew from frequent visits to New
York. I finished the movie feeling even more confused than I was before about
what being Puerto Rican was supposed to mean — to me, and to the “average”
American.
“I finished
the movie feeling even more confused than I was before about what being Puerto
Rican was supposed to mean — to me, and to the ‘average’ American.”
GREEN I’ve
never seen musicals as documentaries. They often rely on stereotypes to make
larger points than they could if they focused on specific, actual
characteristics. Without the stereotypes, you probably couldn’t have ensembles.
The question is whether the stereotypes are vile, destructive. As a white,
non-Latinx person, I’m not the right person to judge that. But I would just say
that the Jets are stereotyped, too, and, in the source material, so are the Veronese.
BERSON Do
you trust that everyone knows the source material is Shakespeare’s R&J? I
wish I did!
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE “The Jets are stereotyped, too,” but white teens are not harmed by
such stereotypes because there have always been such a wealth of
representations to choose from. And at the time of the musical’s debut, there
wasn’t a general suspicion in the air that any white teen might be a gangster,
so “West Side Story” wasn’t, for them, reinforcing an expectation of
criminality that was already violently shaping the politics of the period.
GREEN Would
you say the Puerto Rican characters are less well characterized than the white
ones: the Poles, Italians and others? My sense is that most characters in most
musicals are poorly characterized in terms of their ethnic or racial or other
identity because that’s not what those shows are really about. Don’t get me
started on gay and Jewish stereotypes in musicals, which I guess I’m especially
aware of as a gay Jew.
BERSON The
creators of the show, though they were all white men, were not simply oblivious
to what actual Puerto Ricans were like in New York at the time. For instance,
Jerome Robbins visited Puerto Rican youth dances and social gatherings, and
tried to incorporate some of the popular dance movements he saw in his
choreography. He also tried to recruit as many Latinx performers as possible,
which was difficult because there were so few opportunities for them to get the
Broadway experience and training the show demanded. Also, Bernstein had always
loved and admired Latin music and tried to meld some of the rhythms into his
score.
“The
creators of the show, though they were all white men, were not simply oblivious
to what actual Puerto Ricans were like in New York at the time.”
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE That’s interesting, about Robbins. I’m quite familiar with a broad
range of Latin rhythms, and I don’t hear or see the influence — unless you’re
counting the Spanish paso doble on the rooftop. I do love some of the
choreography, especially the anxious, tightly coiled “Cool,” performed by the
Jets. It’s good to know that someone was at least trying to do their homework
after Sondheim confessed he’d “never even met a Puerto Rican.” In this
conversation, I really hope we can move beyond the false binary: “documentary”
versus “work of imagination.” Does a work of imagination really have to be so
“superficial and sentimental,” which is how the Black Puerto Rican journalist
Jesús Colón described West Side Story when it debuted?
GREEN In
musical theater, that isn’t a false binary. Some shows operate at a granular
level, risking larger insignificance, and others work more broadly, risking
stereotype. “West Side Story,” as Misha can tell us more definitively, was an
idea looking for an ethnicity. And it does seem to me that in landing on Puerto
Ricans vs. whites (instead of Jews vs. Catholics as originally imagined), it
was taking advantage of a news hook of the time without any deep engagement in
Puerto Rican-ness. I guess the question is whether it’s possible for a work to
rise above that when it is primarily looking at the eternal paradigm of
outsiders and insiders, and the tragedy of love that tries to cross those
boundaries.
BERSON That
is “Romeo and Juliet,” Jesse, which one could say (as you indicated) had little
to do with the actual Verona (which Shakespeare never visited) but still is a
potent portrayal of love in the crossfire of hate. I also want to add that
though characters in musicals tend not to be deeply complex and contoured,
Bernardo and Anita are not portrayed simply as bad kids spoiling for a fight.
They are more sympathetic than that, as leaders and lovers, at least to my
understanding — in some ways more so than Jets members.
And a
moment of historical context may be helpful here: At the time of the show’s
creation, there was national alarm about the growing “threat” of youth violence
during the postwar malaise, and that was true of Black, Irish and other groups
of kids. And there was also, among these liberal artists, a real concern about
racial/ethnic prejudice and the rising backlash against immigrants of color.
These things are still meaningful, and one of the reasons I think young people
especially are still very much drawn to the material despite its flaws.
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE I would be more sympathetic to the possibility of “West Side Story”
rising above that fault if its creators, or re-creators, were not taking
advantage of Puerto Ricans as the “news hook” for liberal street cred. If it’s
supposed to be some universal and culturally interchangeable narrative, then it
doesn’t get to count as a serious exploration of Puerto Rican or so-called
Latinx life.
GREEN I
agree that “West Side Story” is not a serious exploration of those things. But
that doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious exploration of something else. I say this
even though I don’t actually think it’s the greatest musical ever written; it
has plenty of aesthetic flaws beyond the political ones we’re discussing. My
love for it comes mostly from the way the songs tell the story — though I know
that too is a point of contention. For me, Sondheim’s lyrics get at the twitchy
excitement (and anger) of youth like nothing else in musical theater ever has —
as do Bernstein’s polyrhythms and percussion, whatever their actual sonic
origin.
HELLER
Matthew, I’m going to circle back to you, as a theater artist whose response to
the material has changed over time. Among other things, you wrote a play about
the play and its impact on a Puerto Rican family. Tell us about it — and was it
informed by your new insights into where the original fell short?
LÓPEZ The
movie did spark my nascent creative brain as a piece of drama — the music, the
dancing — and as cinema. Seeing the revival, though, I realized how much the
Puerto Rican characters — and thereby the performers playing them — were not
invited to the party, so to speak. A meal had been laid out and half the cast
seemed left to go hungry. My family loved “West Side Story,” but as I thought
about it, I realized their love for the show wasn’t reciprocated by it.
All of this
led me to begin writing “Somewhere,” which is set in the neighborhood that was
ultimately destroyed to build Lincoln Center. A Puerto Rican family of dancers
and performers who dream of being cast in “West Side Story” (or anything Jerome
Robbins created) but who, by the realities of their situation, are only left
dreaming. I think in some ways, I was attempting to tell the offstage story
that you don’t see.
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE Matthew, it seems like “Somewhere” shows us how to engage with a
“canonical” work without reproducing its limitations. I’m interested in the way
Puerto Rican artists have creatively navigated the musical’s constraints, but
I’m also hungry for … anything else! In her memoir, Rita Moreno wrote about how
difficult it was to find substantial roles after “West Side Story”: I’m kind of
depressed by the fact that she’s still defined by the show in 2021. I mean,
Moreno performed in plays by Lorraine Hansberry, she spent decades in
psychoanalysis — doesn’t she deserve to grow?
LÓPEZ I do
have to cop to a bifurcated mind on this. There’s a part of me that really
loves “West Side Story” and a part of me that really hates that I love “West
Side Story.” I think Lin-Manuel Miranda once called it “a blessing and a
curse,” which is a sentiment I understand.
BERSON It
makes total sense to have a conflicted opinion of the show, especially if it
speaks to you so personally. It’s not equivalent, but as a Jewish woman, “The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” drives me up the wall! Meanwhile, I can readily imagine
Latinx performers might both love and resent “West Side Story” — love the way
it has given many employment and its exhilarating use of dancer-actor-singers,
but resent it for all the reasons you, Carina and others have stated. Popular
culture is often a double-edged sword that way.
GREEN New
work from new artists is the lifeblood of the theater. Yet engaging with the
old ones, which were new once, can also be pleasurable and valuable — unless
they have become the equivalent of Confederate statues that need to come down.
Is “West Side Story” a Confederate statue? I don’t think so.
“Is ‘West
Side Story’ a Confederate statue? I don’t think so.”
BERSON If
we are now designating imperfect musicals as Confederate statues, I think
that’s scary. “West Side Story” gets produced a lot because it can accommodate
a teenage cast (there have been thousands of high school productions) and
because it is a kind of cultural touchstone that still excites people.
Confederate statues glorify bigotry and apartheid. There’s a difference.
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE Audiences are taught what should resonate with them — nothing becomes
a “cultural touchstone” by accident — and the more a certain narrative gets
repeated, the more sentimental associations it accrues. “West Side Story” might
not be a Confederate monument, but it is a monument to the authority of white
Americans to dominate the conversation about who Puerto Ricans are. And each
revival renews that authority and co-signs the narrative for a new generation.
GREEN All
art is political, yes, and deserves to be judged as such. But art is not just
political, and deserves to be judged on other grounds, too. If there is no
pleasure to be had in “West Side Story” then it cannot possibly overcome the
problems we’re discussing. But if it does offer pleasure, then we, as
individuals, are free to weigh it against those problems. The balance will be
different for different people, not necessarily corresponding with identity.
HELLER
Matthew, you and I had some provocative back-and-forths about critical
responses to “The Inheritance” and its depictions of the gay community, and you
were good enough to write a piece for us, in which you made this point: “No one
piece of writing about our complex, sprawling community will ever tell the
entire story, and I believe that is a good thing: It creates an unquenchable
thirst for more and more narratives.” Does that hold for “West Side Story” as
well?
LÓPEZ I
don’t think it’s an apt comparison. “The Inheritance” is a gay play written by
a gay man whereas “West Side Story” is purported to be about Puerto Ricans and
was written by white men. And while there are heterosexual characters in “The
Inheritance,” they aren’t serving the same dramatic function in my play that
the Puerto Rican characters do in “West Side Story.” And I used the word
“function” purposefully, for that is what they feel in the story. I’d love to
see a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”-style rethinking one day.
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE I agree that any future engagement with “West Side Story” that
actually deepens the material would have to abandon all loyalty to the show as
written, the way “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” completely reimagines “Hamlet.”
It’s an independent work of art that deconstructs the canonical play. I doubt
the creators of “West Side Story” gave a single thought to “new narratives”
that might emerge from their musical, let alone new Puerto Rican narratives.
And it doesn’t seem like the power brokers of Broadway or Hollywood are really
thirsting for them, otherwise the same material wouldn’t get recycled over and
over.
HELLER So
we are getting to the Spielberg movie.
HERRERA I’m
also skeptical of how much the thirst for new narratives comes from a genuine
place, rather than a response to an industry that is clearly grappling with
questions of racism and struggling to navigate critiques about representation.
Honestly, I think there is something sinister about capitalizing on the
nostalgia of a Hollywood artifact, casting an all-Latinx Sharks cast, while
still using the liberal language of “inclusion” and “diversity” as armor
against critique. The fact that “West Side Story” is being remade with these
issues in mind doesn’t necessarily absolve it of its original missteps.
BERSON So
is there no place for “West Side Story,” even with the best of intentions? Does
that mean there’s no place for “Othello” or “Merchant of Venice,” which are
problematic but still dramatically vital works? Can we still see the show, or
not see it, and have fruitful debate about it?
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE I’m not advocating the wholesale erasure of “West Side Story.” I’m
saying, let’s stop pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars into propping
up its relevance, and let’s stop minimizing its flaws.
HERRERA
Misha, I think we can certainly still have a fruitful debate about it! When
discussions around colorism mushroomed online surrounding the film adaptation
of “In the Heights,” I mentioned in our roundtable that criticism emerges from
a place of love — a desire to make art, life and politics better. I don’t see
these critiques as mutually exclusive.
BERSON That
is very well said. And just my awareness of the politics of librettist Arthur
Laurents and composer Leonard Bernstein especially — who were both blacklisted
in the ’50s for their civil rights and other activism — makes me think they
would probably share some of these concerns and find them meaningful. But the
show has intrinsic artistic power, and I think will survive. It is encouraging
to me that someone with the skill and sensitivity of Tony Kushner is the
screenwriter/adapter. I hope it’s great, and I hope it’s the last!
HERRERA I
don’t know if there is such a thing as a great remake, but I’m certainly hoping
this version releases its grip on stereotypes, offers its more underdeveloped
characters a bit of autonomy and perhaps provides more texture about the actual
life and experiences of Puerto Rican migration at the time. And please, give us
at least a few songs with actual Afro-Caribbean rhythms! A plena take on “I
Feel Pretty”?
GREEN
Authenticity isn’t the goal; if “Hamilton” were authentic, it would be mostly
minuets. I want the new movie of “West Side Story” to succeed if it’s good, if
it manages to move people. But if only white people are moved, it will be a
failure.
LÓPEZ I’m
excited to see what Spielberg, Kushner and [the choreographer Justin] Peck do
with the material for a 21st-century audience. It’s a perfect opportunity to
honor what’s glorious about the show, and address what is flawed.
DEL VALLE
SCHORSKE I want it to flop so we can move on.
By Samantha
Ibrahim
September
15, 2021 7:49pm Updated
https://nypost.com/2021/09/15/west-side-story-remake-has-love-1950s-fashion-and-rita-moreno/
Rachel
Zegler and Ansel Elgort are the new Tony and Maria in town in Steven
Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake. The trailer for the musical was released
on Wednesday, and after a year of delays due to the COVID pandemic, the movie
is almost here.
The teaser
is filled with scenes showing 1950s Manhattan and the familiar warring gangs of
the streets. The iconic passion-filled song “Tonight” serves as the background
tune for the trailer.
Against a
backdrop of many colorful Jets and Sharks dancing about, Maria tells Tony,
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“You’re not
Puerto Rican,” she says inquisitively. “Is that OK?” Tony replies, already
falling in love with Maria after just one meeting at a school dance.
Another
shot shows Maria donning her iconic white dress and red belt as she gets ready
with her friend Anita and brother Bernardo. Even Rita Moreno, star of the
original 1961 film, makes an appearance. She’s also an executive producer on
the new adaptation.
The
original romantic drama was adapted from the 1957 Broadway musical by Stephen
Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein. The groundbreaking film won 10 Academy Awards
in 1962 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and
Actress (for Moreno’s portrayal of Anita) and Best Costume Design.
The 2021
version also stars Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Josh Andrés
Rivera, Ana Isabelle, Corey Stoll and Brian d’Arcy James.
It was
announced last month that “West Side Story” would not reopen on Broadway. The
show’s producer Kate Horton announced that the 2020 Broadway revival would not
return despite New York declaring in May that theaters could return to 100%
capacity on Sept. 14.
“This
difficult and painful decision comes after we have explored every possible path
to a successful run, and unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, reopening is
not a practical proposition,” Horton said. “We thank all the brilliant,
creative artists who brought ‘West Side Story’ to life at the Broadway Theatre,
even for so brief a time, especially the extraordinary acting company, 33 of
whom made their Broadway debuts in this production.”
“West Side
Story” hits theaters on Dec. 10.
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