MIXED - West Side Story – Open Run

Left: Cast of West Side Story (the Jets). Palace Theatre on W47th Street.
Every reader of this blog is already aware that West Side Story transports Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the nasty gang warfare of 1950's New York City, long before the gentrification of the Upper West Side. The romance of the two star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, is blighted by conflict between the rival street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds, the white 'Jets' and Hispanic 'Sharks.' This revival coincides with what would have been the 90th birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein who died in 1990, and has been directed by Arthur Laurents, the original book writer who himself is 90, born six weeks before Bernstein. Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics, but in this production, some lyrics are song in Spanish; the original choreography was by Jerome Robbins, who also directed the original Broadway production.
Our good friend Steve saw WSS on a recent visit to NYC and recommended rating this musical revival a PICK, and particularly enjoyed the performance of Josefina Scaglione as Maria:

The story and music is so familiar that, for theater-goers of a certain age, the Puerto Rican gang and ladies speaking and singing in Spanish is no impediment to following the Romeo and Juliet saga. I'm not sure the same holds for the scores of high schoolers seeing the musical for the first time -- even Spanish classes attending might not pick up on "I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That" without consulting the "Cliff Notes" lyrics in the Playbill. I agree with the NYTimes that none of the gang members on either side seem particularly menacing -- but, never mind, what made me glad I saw this rendition is Josefina Scaglione. Imagine an unknown 21-year-old performing in low-key productions in Argentina -- the producers here look at her YouTube clips and cast her as Maria. To listen to her operatic singing is breathtaking to behold --one feels she will shine on Broadway, in London, in films, wherever she desires as long as she wishes to. A star is born.

However, other critics and audience members have generally found this revival of WSS unsatisfying. The performance of Matt Cavanaugh as Tony has come in for harsh criticism; he plays Tony as a mild preppy misplaced among the fierce Jets. Nearly every viewer who has previously seen the show or movie or heard the score comes to WSS with high expectations, and therefore can find fault with some aspect of this production. Our reader Pat from DC wrote in that she had viewed this production at National Theatre in D.C. prior to its New York opening: "The integration of Spanish into the dialogue was artful. However, that aside I have nothing complimentary to say. It had none of the incredible energy of the original; nor the excitement of the movie. Overall I was disappointed."
The following excerpt from Martin Denton's review for nytheatre.com is typical of the critical reaction:

The eagerly anticipated Broadway revival of West Side Story is a major disappointment. This is probably an inevitability. Of all the classic musicals of Broadway's so-called Golden Age, none has been more famously or popularly or faithfully put on film than West Side Story: everything that's iconic about this show is so not because of word-of-mouth or a great cast album but because we've all seen it, as its creators presumably intended it, enshrined and preserved on celluloid (and now digital video) for all time. So we know what Jerome Robbins's extraordinary choreography looks like and how it feels to experience it. We know that amazing Bernstein score. We know all of the beats of the story.
It all begs the question of why even bother trying to make lightning strike once again. Librettist Arthur Laurents has decided to take on the project nonetheless, directing the play himself and abetted by Joey McKneely (reproducing Robbins's original choreography), music director Patrick Vaccariello, and more than a dozen above-the-title producers. They've filled the stage with a big cast and seem to have consciously made the show look and feel as different from the original as they dare. The score is intact, and generally sounds marvelous—far and away, the best element of this production is the big Broadway orchestra playing this music for us. The dancing is intact too, as Robbins ordained, but it is utterly devoid of life or energy, sitting uneasily on performers for whom it was not created.