Summary 
Canadian produced musical that sets a Romeo and Juliet love story within the street gangs on the west side of New York City. Lushly orchestrated live musical score and Sondheim lyrics enhance the conflicts between generations and between rich and poor that ultimately doom the blossoming young romance between Tony and Maria.
Design
Directed by Kelly Robinson. Set by Ruari Murchison. Costumes by Charlotte Dean. Lights by Kevin Fraser. Sound by Peter McBoyle. Musical direction by Berthold Carriere. Choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. Based on a conception of Jerome Robbins. Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Cast
Jake Simons (Riff), Tyley Ross (Tony), Clyde Alves (Action), Raymond Rodriguez (Bernardo), Ma-Anne Dionisio (Maria), Karen Andrew (Anita), Charles Azulay (Chino), Lewis Gordon (Doc), Michael Fletcher (Schrank).
Analysis
Kelly Robinson stages the Stratford Festival's West Side Story within the narrow but deep Avon Theatre, and his stage portraits exploit this abundance of depth. A downstage backdrop and two sliding walls on each side of the stage open and close to reveal various "windows" of staging. The backdrop and walls are dark purple and black and resemble large construction bricks.
A pair of eight-foot mesh cages, each made of chain-link fencing over wooden frames, comprise the majority of the interior setting. The wheeled cages adjust to become fences, walking paths, the door to Doc's Drugstore, and basketball backboards during the gymnasium Dance scene.
Berthold Carriere conducts an orchestra of nearly thirty pieces. The superlative orchestra proves itself more than up to the challenges of Leonard Bernstein's vibrant score, with its sudden, alternating emphases on resounding brass and rich strings.
The cast for the show is young, with twenty-nine actors and actresses but only four adult roles. The cast excels at the rigorous ballet-like dancing and fares better at singing than at acting. Shortcomings, however, are for the most part overcome with sheer exuberance, even the jarring oddities of 1950s New York City gang speech: "cracko jacko," "cut the frabber jabber," or "let's get the chicks and kick it."
The production's standout performance comes from Tyley Ross as Tony, a dark-haired, boyish Romeo with a sonorous voice. Ross's singing abilities render the potentially cloying strains of the song "Maria" into a vocal showcase as well as an example of sweet obsession. More importantly, Ross's acting establishes Tony's character early as a respected gang member who has matured beyond gang camaraderie. With "Something's Coming," Ross's Tony sings of "reaching out" and of something being "right outside the door": happily, his brief love affair with Maria and tragically, the multiple deaths in the gang war.
Tony's friendship with Riff, the leader of the Jets, carries ironic overtones: when one says "from womb to tomb," the other responds with "from sperm to worm," foreshadowing Riff's death at the hands of the rival Sharks. Tony's maturity is surpassed by his sense of loyalty, so when the Mercutio-like, independent Riff - "I've never asked the time of day from a clock" - asks him to attend the potentially dangerous Dance at the Gym - the equivalent of the Romeo and Juliet masque at the Capulet home - Tony agrees, although with reluctance and foreboding: "I'll live to regret this."
At the Dance, Tony meets Maria and, like Romeo and Juliet, the two become "alone" in a room crowded with people. They meet at center stage as the sounds of the Dance die away, and they gaze into each other's eyes and sway back and forth before finally sharing a spot-lit kiss.
Before a backdrop of multicolored windows, the two later share a makeshift New York City "balcony scene." Tony climbs wooden steps to visit Maria outside her tenement window. Pointedly, Tony insists, "I'm not one of them," and the smitten Maria sings back that "Tonight, tonight, I saw you and the world went away."
Ma-Anne Dionisio portrays the ingenuous Maria with a fresh-faced sweetness and, later, a surprising awareness of emotional consequences. She shares the tender "One Hand, One Heart" duet with Ross's Tony within the dress shop where she works, and the two imitate their parents before donning top hat and wedding veil to kneel and exchange vows. The song is cogent - "now it begins, now we start, one hand, one heart" - in the ironic light of the approaching gang violence: "only death will part us now."
The irony reaches its peak with Maria's "I Feel Pretty," sung immediately after interval and the stabbing deaths of Riff and Maria's Tybalt-like brother, Bernardo. In her tiny bedroom with its curved ceiling, shown in a wedge at stage right, Maria sings to her girlfriends that "tonight is my wedding night." In her unabashed joy ("I am crazy"), she swings her vanity mirror so recklessly that her three friends must duck to avoid being struck.
Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues, with their accompanying familial requirements for loyalty, are replaced in West Side Story by the Sharks and the Jets, with their gangland allegiances: as Riff says, "once you're a Jet, you're a Jet for life." The mercurial Riff opens the play as he swaggers through one of the cages while smoking a cigarette and snapping his fingers to summon the Jets. The Jets wear pastel shirts with blue denim jeans and white sneakers, in contrast to Bernardo's Sharks, who sport colorful shirts, black denim jeans and black sneakers.
The Jets erupt into kinetic dancing to intimidate rival Sharks, and the tension breaks into a rumble with kicks, punches, headlocks, and Bernardo biting the ear of one of the Jets. At the Dance, red, white and blue curtains adorn the upstage space as the Jets and Sharks again compete, here with dance contests that include manic mambos and cha-chas, all performed with exuberant shouts and hand-clapping. Officer Krupke watches from the overhead catwalk, at times making his presence known by rapping the catwalk railing with his nightstick.
Riff delivers a tragically ironic "Cool" as his hotheaded character instructs his gang ("don't get hot") on the disadvantages of losing their cool ("take it slow, daddy-o"). Riff also foreshadows his own stabbing death: "you're cutting a hole in yourselves." The dance number figuratively explodes the set of Doc's Drugstore, as counter, stools, booth and table are wheeled away to make room for the flight of the dancers. The dancers shout "pow!" and clutch their midsections as if shot, and the scattered set pieces are re-assembled moments later as the war council continues.
The Rumble is staged in eerie blue lighting with Tony in the middle. Sharks gather upon wooden stairs, opposed by Jets perched upon the mesh cages. When Riff is stabbed, Tony's gang loyalty and friendship overshadow his love for Maria and her family, and he kills Bernardo. The police approach with searching flashlights, and Tony flees to the sound of an ominously tolling bell, as the purple and black backdrop slowly descends to signal the interval.
Anita and Doc serve as the Nurse and Friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet, although Anita is also in love with Bernardo/Tybalt. Anita displays wickedly quick Latin dance moves at the Dance, and here she assails Maria with the song "A Boy Like That," denigrating Tony with "stick to your own kind," and "a boy who kills has no heart." Maria's loving spirit wears her down, however, and as Maria sings "I Have a Love," Anita grows silent, then begins weeping as she lies in the lap of her friend. Finally, Anita joins Maria, finishing the song as a duet with the mutually understanding line of "your love is your life."
The less-than-wise Doc does not provide insightful counseling ("I have no mind; I'm a village idiot") or comic relief, but represents a friend blind to skin color. Later, when he slaps the panicking Tony, Doc wonders if violence is the only way to get through to modern youth - "to bust like a hot water pipe" - and his exit from Tony's bare bulb lit hideout in the cellar is made with abject defeat.
Arthur Laurents' mid-1950s book blames the lovers' tragedy on poor race relations in the United States, and Robinson furthers the notion in this production, notably subtitled, An American Tragedy. When Lieutenant Schrank tells the Puerto Rican gang to leave Doc's, he includes an ugly racial slur, and as they grudgingly exit, they whistle Stephen Foster's "America." In the second act ballet sequence, Tony and Maria's dream of heaven becomes a horrific red-lit nightmare with the bloody stabbings of Riff and Bernardo re-enacted. During this scene, a huge American flag dominates upstage. As Tony collapses in horror at the violence that has destroyed so many lives, the flag behind him breaks apart as well. Robinson seems to blame the American social environment - specifically the urban economic squalor and racial intolerance of the west side of New York - for the destruction of love and youthful dreams.
The escalating effect of intolerance and violence is displayed in a pair of disturbing second-act scenes. In "Gee, Officer Krupke," the leaderless Jets comment about their status in the eyes of the police: "to them, we ain't human, we're cruddy juvenile delinquents." It will take a character of the stature of Maria to show them, later, how they have treated others in the same fashion.
The Krupke song and dance is a showstopper, immediately following Tony's bloody nightmare sequence, and the physical humor involves a repetition of police brutality. The suddenly cute gang members ("I'm depraved because I'm deprived") dance a ring-around-the-rosey and pretend to be a brass band, then imitate and deride a judge, a psychologist and a social worker, all while singing refrains of "we're disturbed," then, "we are sick," and finally, "we're no good." At the number's conclusion, they tower over a helpless police officer, now not so cute any more, and they shout with angry vehemence, "Krup you."
The escalation of violence flares to its ugliest in the taunting scene, just before the tragic Finale. Anita arrives at Doc's with good intentions, but the Jets refer to her as "Bernardo's pig" and block her exit before suddenly molesting her and preparing a gang rape. After Doc stops them, the Jets seem as shocked as Anita, and the effect on her is devastating. Anita tells the heinous untruth that Maria has been shot and killed, and Doc summarizes the brutality by telling the Jets, "you make this world lousy."
Although Ross's Tony elevates the production, Dionisio's Maria elevates the story. A ballet sequence represents her leading Tony to heaven - "there's some place for us" - where the two can "find a new way of living" that includes the forgiveness they cannot find in their current reality. The scene plays amid swirling stage fog that represents clouds, and the tops of New York skyscrapers jut through the mist. Finger-snapping gang members from both sides dance through the "heavens," leaping and looking up and down with wonderment, and they finally face and co-exist with their rivals without violence. After the scarlet nightmare sequence ends the scene, reality resumes within Maria's bedroom, where she solemnly crosses herself before giving herself to Tony in consummation of their marriage.
In the finale, Tony, like Romeo without Juliet, chooses not to live. He runs through the streets in pursuit of Chino, who, like Paris in Romeo and Juliet, has been engaged to Maria/Juliet. Tony sees Maria far upstage, silhouetted in light blue light, but is shot by the avenging Chino. Unlike Romeo, Tony accepts blame for the tragedy: "I didn't believe hard enough." When he passes away while Maria holds his hand, she stands and bravely stops the Jets from seeking retribution - "we all killed him, and my brother, and Riff" - and her closing anguish raises the story from romantic tragedy to searing social commentary.
Maria, like a suddenly wise Juliet, acknowledges the changes within her - "I can kill now because I hate now" - and she threatens all the gang members with Chino's handgun. But, unlike Tony and Chino (and Hamlet, for that matter), Maria chooses not to perpetuate the vicious circle of the revenge code. Instead, Maria drops the gun and embraces Tony, as the mesh cages close in behind her, the backdrop begins to fall from above, and the walls slide in from the side. In this tiny stage "window," Maria shows true courage in embracing Tony as city life continues behind her, and this poignant production concludes.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.18, No.2, Spring 2000.