Why "West Side" revival is not a good "Story".

I was very surprised by my initial reaction to the recent NYT article “Jets? Yes! Sharks? ¡Sí! in Bilingual ‘West Side’ “ To describe it quickly, I responded to my friend who forwarded it to me – “Oh No. This is awful...”

I felt this knot in my gut. Not unlike that cringing sensation I got a few months back when a relative of mine made a very "conservative" and slightly racist statement while dining with me and my liberal-leaning friends.

I would suspect that many people would wonder why I reacted that way. After all, “West Side Story” is a classic! A masterpiece of music and dance, extremely successful and has stood the test of time. It is part of the musical canon studied by artists across America. I myself sang “Something’s Coming” as a solo for my high school graduation. What gives?

Nostalgia aside, there are so many things wrong with the idea of a “West Side Story” revival that may not be obvious to the general person. When I think about what it has done and what it could do again to the image of Latinos, and Puerto Ricans specifically, I all but wish the new production never makes the live stage.

Let me first acknowledge that “West Side Story” introduced to many the actual existence of Puerto Ricans on the American landscape. Before the 1957 Broadway production, most of America didn’t even know what or who Puerto Ricans were. “West Side Story” correctly reflected a phenomenon that would shape the US over the next century– Latino immigration. It also launched the career of Rita Moreno – a record breaking actor who was the first female and Latino to win all four major entertainment awards, a feat very few have accomplished of any nationality. “West Side Story” was indeed groundbreaking for its time in its remake of the Romeo and Juliet story and for its ability to keep audiences singing its score for decades.

Cut 50 years, and now Arthur Laurents wants to bring back the musical, this time with a “grittier” motif and having the actors speak Spanish with each other, apparently during some highly passionate, “bilingual sexual spats” and some translated changes to the songs.

It is obvious to most anyone I know that this revival is in response to the great success of today’s Latino-themed Broadway musical whose title is also derived from a New York neighborhood, “In the Heights.” Less anyone make any further connections between the two shows, let’s be very clear - These two musicals couldn’t be more different from each other. One is a story of battles between “natives” and “new comers” to the US, the other a story of an established community adjusting to gentrification and changing economic times.

“West Side Story” has themes within it that in today’s world are tired and cliché. The images of knife-toting youth, loud and over-sexed women, and dark-skinned aliens on US soil are depictions many modern day Latinos would rather not have revived on stage. These archetypes have shaped and limited the scope of Latino characters in American entertainment for decades. While the love story in it tries to transcend race and culture and speak of tolerance, the songs and supporting scenes have been a thorn in the side of Latinos for years. For example, I know of many Latina women named Maria who have had to endure listening to men crone “Maria…I met a girl named…Maria…” when being introduced, even in professional settings like the office and in academia. The song “America” is littered with stereotypes, and while they are uttered by the Puerto Rican characters among themselves, the images they project of life as Latinos create lasting negative impressions on audiences that then shape their biases and interactions. It’s also an inaccurate depiction of the immigrant experience – very few Puerto Ricans, or other immigrants, despite economic hardship or any other reason for immigrating to the US, would ever describe their birth country as “You ugly island . . . Island of tropic diseases.” “West Side Story” did for Latinos what mob movies did for Italians. While creating great entertainment, it limited the possibility that certain types of people could be anything other than certain types of characters.

The Spanish translations will not bring credibility or authenticity to the story. The New York Times article mentions that Mr. Laurents went through much effort to consult with Latin American writers from Argentina and Colombia but fail to note that Argentine and Colombian Spanish is distinctly different from the Spanish spoken by Puerto Ricans. This is a weak and poorly researched attempt at authenticity. In the 1950s and 60s, the New York Puerto Rican community were already into its 2nd generation, and it’s those children that are reflected in this musical. For the majority of youth during this period, Spanish was not their first language, it was their parent’s. If anything, Mr. Laurents should be integrating local urban slang for that generation of youth. I had conversations with my parents who grew up in NY during this time and while Spanish was spoken with elders and at home, the language of the street was as English as it is today, minus the horrible accents represented by the non-Latino actors in “Brown-face” who played in both the original Broadway show and its movie adaptations.

Mr. Laurents promises to diversify the cast, but Latino actors playing these roles will do very little to modernize the play unless he does work to change the image of the characters they would play. There is some hint in the article that Mr. Laurent’s intends to equalize the two gangs in the story. However that leads me to my other point. There were gangs in New York in the 50s and 60s. We get it. Do we need to create harsher portrayals of these gangs, adding more violence to “modernize” the story? Doesn’t the musical “Grease” show us that suburbia also had gangs? Do we need grittier, more violent portrayals of the T-Birds, Scorpions and Pink Ladies to make these characters more authentic?

“West Side Story”, while ground breaking in it’s time, needs to allow for more modern musicals like “In the Heights” to take the mantle and help shape a more positive and uplifting image of Latinos in entertainment. Broadway enthusiasts and movie buffs will forever acknowledge the foundation Mr. Laurents and the creators of “West Side Story” laid for future generations to build upon, but unless the characters, songs, and message are entirely rewritten to better fit modern times, I can only see this revival damaging the progress that’s been made to date.