Lauren’s heart beats believably in her throat as she sings about her great love for Tony. Finally, in a rehearsal room at Pearl Studios, on the third floor of a skyscraper on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, the 20-year-old musical actress faces three men who will soon decide whether she can play Maria, the female lead in the classic “West Side”. Story”.
One of the three promptly interrupts with a nod to pianist Bruce. Director Lonny Price asks Lauren to sing a little more euphorically, intoxicated, freshly in love. And she actually succeeds in smiling and beaming even more ecstatically seconds later.
The time is ripe for a new stage version
Musical director Grant Sturiale sits to his left and choreographer Julio Monge to his right. The artist trio is currently rehearsing a new touring production of “West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein (music), Arthur Laurents (book) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) with the original 1957 choreography created by Jerome Robbins. Monge was Robbins’ student. Price was friends with Bernstein and Sondheim. And composer and conductor Sturiale directed the show on Broadway for many years.
After the success of Steven Spielberg’s musical film, which was nominated for seven Oscars in 2022, producer Ralf Kokemüller from Mehr-BB Entertainment felt the time was right for a new English stage version, which will initially be shown in Germany, Ireland, France and Austria.
It starts in mid-December at the Deutsches Theater in Munich and will later also stop at the Bremen Metropol Theater (March 15 to March 19, 2023). Alexander Bernstein, Leonard’s son, was sympathetic to Kokemüller’s suggestion. Bernstein, President of Artful Learning, Inc., an educational concept developed by his father, has worked with the German producer for more than two decades.
“For my sisters and me, ‘West Side Story’ was always like another sibling,” says Bernstein in the New York family apartment, which is no longer inhabited by the heirs of the legendary composer, but is tended like a small museum with memorabilia from his life . Alexander was three years old when his father’s masterpiece came out on Broadway, so he didn’t get to know it until several years later. “My sister and I had a record and listened to it over and over. My father used to enjoy singing the three-syllable names of our friends to the tune of ‘Maria’,” he recalls.
The success of “West Side Story” surprised his father at the time, despite the quality of the play, says Alexander Bernstein, “after all, at the end of each act there are dead people lying around on the stage.” But Arthur Laurent’s adaptation of the story from William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet ’, for which he meticulously adhered to the original, is no more outdated than his father’s compositions.
The world has not changed fundamentally since the 1950s, there are still waves of immigration, rivalries between youth gangs and young people who fall in love, Bernstein explains the continuing success of the work: “The fact that there is still violence on the streets, is the sad thing about it, but that also means, of course, that the play is still relevant.”
Director Lonny Price agrees: “It’s about today’s young people. They are Tony, they are Maria, they are Bernardo. Even if they are not in a gang, they fight against their parents for their own way.” And he states: “The restrictions imposed by social class, by social constellations, have been in effect since Romeo and Juliet, since the Capulets and Montagues.”
“The ‘West Side Story’ is the pinnacle of musical art”
Price approaches the new production with great respect, which for him draws on two sources. Price: I love the movie. Spielberg gave the characters amplified motives for their actions, and I also liked the new interpretation of the songs. But I love the original just as much.” So the viewer gets what they expect and a little extra.
Price raves about the quality of young musical talent in New York and wanted the “youngest possible performers so that they feel like they are telling their own story.” He describes the experience from the auditions as extraordinarily relaxed: “We listen to the music eight hours a day , and she never gets bored. You can listen to a song like ‘Maria’ twelve times in a row without getting annoyed.”
Musical director Grant Sturiale raves even higher: “With all due respect to other shows: ‘West Side Story’ is the pinnacle of musical art. Every time I listen to the music, I discover something new in it.” Pearl Studios is currently auditioning for Life of Pi, Cinderella, and Dracula in the rooms surrounding the West Side Story dance hall. . But none of these pieces fits here as well as the story of the love between Tony and Maria that is as great as it is impossible.
Because their setting is just a few blocks north on the Upper West Side, around the time Lincoln Center was built. The new stage design by designer Anna Louizos brings the 1950s to life with advertising on the walls of the building. Tony is the leader of the Jets, a white gang, Maria is the sister of Bernardo, boss of the rival Sharks from Puerto Rico.
Fate unfolds when Tony tries in vain to prevent a fight between the gangs at Maria’s request. But when Bernardo stabs Tony’s best friend Riff, he avenges him and kills the brother of his great love. Eventually, as a result of scheming acts of revenge, a shark shoots Tony dead, who mistakenly believed Maria had been murdered. The story is accompanied by Bernstein’s firework of hits from “Maria” to “Tonight” and “Somewhere” to “America”. If you just want to go there and experience something, you can soon make an excursion with a short journey.
Participation in the trip was supported by Mehr-BB Entertainment. You can find our standards of transparency and journalistic independence at www.axelspringer.de/independence.