There's a Place For The Jets and Sharks

In 1995, it would probably be impossible to write a musical about gang warfare, racism, police brutality, and attempted rape. Drive-by shootings aren't the kind of thing out-of-towners spend $50 to see on the Great White Way. But Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" comes from a more innocent time, when a knife fight could seem a natural subject for a ballet, and a line like "got a rocket in your pocket" didn't automatically provoke knowing winks from the audience. To present that musical now, without turning it into pure kitsch, requires a daunting level of sincerity and enthusiasm. To do it with HRDC's limited resources, and to do it well, would be something like a triumph.

Triumphant is the best word to describe the atmosphere at Agassiz Theater last Friday night. The new HRDC production of "West Side Story" (directed by Scott Brown, produced by Melissa Swift) takes on the full challenge of the musical--the singing, dancing, scatting, even the blindingly bright costumes--and pulls it off with style. The make-or-break moment comes right at the beginning, when the Jets, snapping in rhythm and looking cool, break into that first pirouette. Not only is it surprisingly graceful, but the six buddy-boys do it with such infectious high spirits that the audience can't help but respond in kind.

It is in these group numbers, when the music is loud and the energy high, that the musical is most successful. The mambo contest in the dance hall is wonderful from the first syncopated shout. The extended pursuit of Jets by Sharks, and vice versa, which opens the musical is deft and witty. It is tribute enough to the dancers' skills that twelve people can have an elaborately choreographed brawl on the Agassiz's cramped stage without seeming awkward; credit for this must also go to the choreographer, Isabel Legarda, who assimilates Jerome Robbins without duplicating him. The production reaches its height in the exuberant "Gee, Officer Krupke," which finds all the humor present in the music and words, and adds some more in sheer silliness.

Inevitably, this "West Side Story" is less at ease in its quieter moments, when the singing and the orchestra are more exposed. As the film of the musical shows, it is difficult for anyone to get through molasses like "There's a Place for Us" and make it interesting. Both Maria (Marisa Chandler) and Tony (Adam Wolfsdorf) have good voices and sing with confidence, but they generally lack the power to carry such a heavy musical weight; the pace slackens in their solos and duets. There is an added tension in their different singing styles. Chandler's delicate, operatic tone often seems at odds with Wolfsdorf's self-consciously dramatic, new Broad way style. When she's not singing. Chandler's over-deliberate inflections seem very reminiscent of Natalie Wood's in the film.

Shar von Boskirk's Anita is heavy on sass, making her excellent in the back-and-forth taunts of "America," but rather too cute for comfort in the long haul. It is hard to play a Puerto Rican caricatures without mugging, however, and it is certainly better to have a spicy Anita than a bland one.

As Riff, Tony's best friend and the leader of the Jets. Dusty Thomson is charming. In "Cool," he handles the tricky melody and the non-sense syllables with real grace redeeming what is perhaps the musical's closest approach to absurdity. Tracy Pizzo swaggers nicely as Anybody's, the tomboy who just wants to be one of the boys.

Even the orchestra, usually the bane of Harvard musicals, does its job well. It avoids the cardinal sun of drowning out the sin of drowning out the cast a special danger at the Agassiz with its wretched acoustics, and one that nearly sunk "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" two years ago. The jazzy score requires more precision and conviction than most there is very little room for judging in the trills of the mambo and America," and this group, reinforced by angers from the New England Conservatory and the Berklee and Longy Schools, is equal to it the few lapses came in the quieter passages, where the filigree of strings sometimes faltered, especially at the end of the first act. Occasionally problems with the amplification system made some phrases inaudible while others were painfully loud, but this will be remedied we hope.

This "West Side Story" succeeds by concentrating on the particular strengths of the student production; energy, enthusiasm, and good will. These are so evident that the corresponding lapses in polish and perfection are easily forgiven. Even at its weakest moments, this show is winning. At its best, it makes a "West Side Story" that would be enviable be on any stage.