Electricity cultivated the performance of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story the evening of June 16, 1999 in Stratford, Ontario. The performers adored the work, and that came across to the audience.
The choreography was exceptional. The performers danced with a spontaneity that convinced the audience that the behavior was natural, and were not simply watching unrealistic events, while fully embellishing all the movements. Most all of the actors executed their roles with abandon. The actor playing Tony was ideal for the role. His light tenor voice and surprisingly youthful appearance (he was 27) gave the effect of a young man in the midst of his youth. "Maria" is a very difficult song, and he was able to sing it with impressive ease while giving the high notes a rich, creamy delicacy.
The stage design was both unconventional and genius. Upon the opening of act II, the curtain unveiled Maria's room, created by using a single-point perspective and placing the vanishing point about ten to fifteen feet behind the room. Even at the back of the theatre, the slanting walls and ceiling forced the spectators to feel closed in by the three walls. Extrapolating with this idea, I believe the design causes us to mentally extend the walls to include ourselves in the room, helped by the walls opening up toward the audience.
"Cool" brought another interesting convention. During the dance section, the back wall of Doc's drug store opened up to allow for a larger dance floor. Ordinarily, this would have marred the credibility of a performance, but the stage director recognized the unique potential here that opening up the back wall for the dance number would simply add to the immensity of all the Jets' emotions at that point.
The costume design was adequate. Since any particularly lavish clothing would have been inappropriate, the costume designer's goal was not very difficult - recreate the clothing of only forty years ago. To this extent, the designer's goals were met.
While the production was an overwhelming success, it was not without flaws. The actor who played Maria had vocal difficulties. Her breathy voice lead to an inert and impotent portrayal of her role. In addition, the high notes of "I Feel Pretty" were far from ideal. Her impotent Maria gave the final scene in which she confronts the other gang members a feeling that her behavior is out of character. While the actor cast as Anita also experienced vocal difficulties during "A Boy Like That" (her voice cracked twice), it was clear that is was an isolated incidence, while Maria's problems were far more long term. Fortunately, Anita's strong stage presence and rich deep voice far outweighed the few mistakes she made.
Continuing with casting, many of the Sharks appeared to be far too old and chubby to be teenage gangsters. Also, during the rumble in the first act, Bernardo was wearing a black wife-beater, and during the dream sequence reenacting the rumble, he was wearing a white wife-beater. While this is a small inconsistency, it succeeds in taking the mind of some audience members away from the story and placing it on the mechanics of the production.
I believe that the director's goal was to recreate faithfully Bernstein's own conception of West Side Story. Unlike other conventions of changing the time period, such as setting Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in an all boys school, the director chose to be consistent with the libretto by choosing the traditional setting of the gang-infested streets of New York City during the 1950s. One convention that was peculiar to the Stratford production was the circular approach that was used to tie the end back to the beginning. During the overture, a small rectangle showing a chainlink fence and people's feet walking behind it portrays people everyone going about their vulgar activities. At the end, after all the police and gang members leave, we see the same rectangle with people walking behind it, but with one change - Maria is still lying with Tony's body the following morning. This conveys that although the tragedy took place, only one among the living learned from the war of the gangs. This brings about a direct message to the audience of the disinterest of most people, and the great injustice committed.
I was affected emotionally by this performance more than any other I theatre performance I had ever seen. The ending of the first act was particularly heart wrenching, which added an ominous irony to the opening of act II's "I Feel Pretty." By the end of act II, I was completely in tears. A five tissue performance.
