The Making of West Side Story

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

When West Side Story premiered on Broadway in 1957, the New York critics
did not immediately hail it as a landmark in the development of America
musical theatre. Such a consensus began to formulate only in the wake of
the critical accolades bestowed on the production following its London
premiere a year later. This surprising fact is one of many that pepper
Keith Garebian’s graceful and insightful account of the theatrical
evolution of West Side Story, from its genesis to its ultimate
significance in the history of the Broadway musical.

At the heart of the narrative is the extraordinary collaboration that
took place between four heavyweights of the musical theatre: composer
Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, choreographer Jerome
Robbins, and playwright Arthur Laurents. That co-operation figured more
prominently than competition in this potentially combustible partnership
is one of the book’s other surprises. The only real horror story is to
be found in the tyrannies endured by the original Broadway cast at the
hands of the perfectionistic Robbins. (West Side Story might have been
East Side Story, we discover, had the Big Four stuck with Robbins’s
“original idea to use Shakespeare’s play ... in order to tell a
story of feuding Catholics and Jews at Passover time.”)

Garebian is equally attentive to the contributions of other
instrumental figures, among them producer Hal Prince, set designer
Oliver Smith, costume designer Irene Sharaff, lighting technician Jean
Rosenthal, and, of course, principal members of the cast (Chita
Rivera’s is the most recognizable name). The superabundance of talent
that surrounded the 1957 production does not cow the author into
suspending critical judgment about the musical itself. His opinion that
West Side Story “is more melodrama than tragedy or even good drama”
bespeaks his refusal to clothe this legendary work in puffery.