West Side Story--Brooklyn story?

A-Rab (as a psychologist): In my opinion, this child don't need to have his head shrunk at all. Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease.
Action: Hey, I got a social disease!
--Gee, Officer Krupke

(many thanks to West Side Story's Broadway site for the pictures!)

I went to see West Side Story last night with The Birthday Girl (welcome to the big 2-3, lady!!). It was PHENOMENAL. I haven't watched the movie in awhile, and I'd forgotten how amazing the choreography is--that Jerome Robbins knew his stuff! I happen to despise Romeo and Juliet (which West Side Story is based on) and I'm also not that fond of the movie, but the play was so much better. I think part of the reason was that Maria and Tony weren't as dippy on stage--part of the reason I don't like the movie much is because I don't care about their love story. Natalie Wood was not able to play a Puerto Rican very realistically, and Marni Nixon, lord love her, sounds even less like one.

But this Maria (Josephina Scaglione) and Tony (Matthew Hydzik) were vibrant and real--you could sort of sense that he was so devoted to her and she was in love but more strong than he was. When he died it was awful, awful. Her line at the end--about "You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, but with hate. Well now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!" was good and so sad and not overly melodramatic. And the dancing, as I mentioned, was totally cool. I like Sondheim and Bernstein A LOT, and their lyrics and music don't disappoint with this one. Some cool dissonance and timing, which the cast did really well. I would imagine it's a hard musical to sing, but they pulled it off.

Another totally cool thing is that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book for West Side Story, directed this new Broadway revival and rewrote some of the Sharks songs ("I Feel Pretty") and dialogue into the Spanish that the Sharks, as recent Puerto Rican immigrants, would have been speaking. Here is a pretty good article about the change. And here is another one which discusses Laurents's motivation for the rewrites. AND, here is an article with some clips. The Spanish works. Very well. It adds to the tension, as one of the actors points out in one of the articles--with the language barrier, it's another alienation between the groups, which highlights the alienation between recent immigrants, established street toughs, and the cops who don't respect them and don't know how to handle them.

Before moving to Brooklyn, most of my knowledge of gang-culture came from listening to West Side Story, much as most of my knowledge of nannies comes from Mary Poppins, and most of my knowledge of fake-cockney accents comes from My Fair Lady. Here is an anecdote to illustrate this point: I was helping my cousin set up her classroom last September, and I was doodling on some of the folder labels to decorate--mostly spirals, stars, waves, etc. After glancing over at me, my cousin said, "get rid of the 5-point stars, or my Crip kids are going to think I'm siding with my Blood kids, and that could cause me some problems." I was helping her rip paper out of notebooks last week, and this time I barely even noticed all the notebooks with 5-pointed stars etched on them and how a lot of those kids only wrote their notes in red (Blood colors) to make a point. It's interesting what a difference a year makes, eh?

That being said, gang-culture is not about dancing and it's not any better now than it was in the 1950's, although the players have changed. I have trouble figuring out gang-culture and warfare because it is so different from anything I've personally experienced, but it's not alien to me anymore. I live in between two gang territories, and while it is very unlikely that I'll be caught in the crossfires (literally and figuratively), I'm aware of it. Marking your territory with graffiti? Objectifying women, in ways that I can't even fathom? Racist assumptions from the police? Stupid, macho, and it makes me lived. And yet--as Riff points out, "when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way." You always have someone to back you up, to be there for you. At the end of the day, that is something that I think we all want. At the end of the day, I can sort of see the appeal of that.