This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:18] Jamie DuMont: Welcome to Fabulous Invalid, Broadway's podcast, where we present essential conversations with a curated roster of the best, most important, and innovative theater makers working today.

[0:28] Rob Russo: From actors to writers, directors, designers, and everyone in between.

[0:32] Jamie DuMont: We took our name from the title of a 1938 play by Kaufman and Hart that has since become a loving nickname for Broadway itself.

[0:38] Rob Russo: Always deemed on the verge of decline, yet always bouncing back, the fabulous invalid.

[0:43] Jamie DuMont: I'm Jamie DuMont.

[0:46] Rob Russo: And I'm Rob Russo, writer and theater critic with Staged Left.nyc and Stage Left the Podcast.

[0:52] Jamie DuMont: Hi, Rob!

[0:53] Rob Russo: Hi, Jamie.

[0:54] Jamie DuMont: Well, here we are again.

[0:56] Rob Russo: This week we're continuing our season-long theme of our favorite things by taking a look at the classic musical West Side Story.

[1:19] Jamie DuMont: Yes, and we will share later on in the episode a special conversation we had between Broadway's original Maria, Carol Lawrence, and Broadway's latest Maria, Shereen Pimentel.

[1:30] Rob Russo: The two Marias.

[1:31] Jamie DuMont: The two Marias.

[1:32] Rob Russo: Ah, I'm so excited.

[1:34] Jamie DuMont: First, uh, we wanted to briefly celebrate the story of West Side Story.

[1:39] Rob Russo: Um, you know, how this iconic musical came to be, and how it holds such a special place, not just in American culture, um, but as we learned from our conversation with Ivo, in culture all around the world.

[1:50] Jamie DuMont: Um, it really is such a cultural landmark, and hence why it's one of our favorite things.

[1:55] Rob Russo: I think it's, you know, even people that don't really care about musical theater, they all know West Side Story.

[2:02] Jamie DuMont: Everyone has some relationship to the film, to the music, to the symphonic suites, to doing it in high school, whatever.

[2:11] Rob Russo: Well, dipping, you know, into the story of West Side Story, this musical, obviously, if you don't know anything about it, in 1949, uh, a friend of Jerome Robbins was doing Romeo and Juliet, and that's how he got the idea of, you know, what if I were to set this in the present and you know, make the sort of warring factions, you know, represent factions of our own society.

[2:34] Jamie DuMont: And his initial idea was to make uh Juliet a Jewish girl and Romeo uh an Italian Catholic, and to set the show uh during the Easter Passover season on the Lower East Side of New York City.

[2:47] Rob Russo: And I always thought this was like a joke, but it's so true that the original title, the working title of the piece was West Side Story, uh, which is just so hysterical that it ended up being West Side Story.

[2:58] Jamie DuMont: I heard a story that actually Jerome Robbins part of his thinking of this piece would be that it would be a good piece for his then boyfriend Montgomery Clift to do an updated version of Romeo.

[3:11] Rob Russo: So, which is interesting because Montgomery Clift wasn't a dancer, so obviously Jerome Robbins was thinking about this as something being outside of a dance piece, if that story is in fact true.

[3:22] Jamie DuMont: Well, Tony doesn't really dance as much, you know, it's if you're looking at character tracks.

[3:26] Rob Russo: That's very true.

[3:27] Jamie DuMont: Can you imagine Montgomery Clift as Tony?

[3:30] Rob Russo: And you know, so of course he uh brought this project idea to Leonard Bernstein, um, who he had collaborated very famously on um with uh On the Town in 1945 and with other pieces, uh Fancy-Free and you know, um, and uh Arthur Lawrence, um, who, you know, of course was a sort of budding playwright at the time, and they started working on it, and the you know, I think they all sort of abandoned the project because uh they hit a dead end and the material itself felt like a bit of a retread um thematically, you know, the idea of of um Jews and Catholics, you know, being at odds with each other by 1949, it just sort of felt like, well, this has sort of been done.

[4:12] Jamie DuMont: Um and you know, most famously in the play um AB Z Irish Rose.

[4:16] Rob Russo: You know, something else I love about the creation of West Side Story is the notion that um, you know, Leonard Bernstein thought about it as an opera, and that Lawrence and Jerome Robbins were very adamant that it wasn't going to be an opera.

[4:31] Jamie DuMont: They weren't they weren't ever going to do that.

[4:34] Rob Russo: And I think that's so interesting because something else I read, which I did not know, was the I the person that planted the seed in Leonard Bernstein's head of doing uh modern style operetta or a modern opera was George Abbott.

[4:49] Jamie DuMont: Oh I thought was fascinating.

[4:52] Rob Russo: I because of all the people that would come up with that idea, George Abbott seems like the least likely.

[4:58] Jamie DuMont: So for what it's worth.

[4:59] Rob Russo: Yeah, well, and especially because years later, when it came time to actually produce the show, George Abbott was the one who told Hal Prince, don't do it.

[5:08] Jamie DuMont: I know, I know.

[5:09] Rob Russo: Clearly his opinion of the piece uh changed from giving them the idea uh musically to uh saying don't do it, right?

[5:18] Jamie DuMont: Oh, so funny.

[5:19] Rob Russo: Well, so they abandoned the project, right?

[5:21] Jamie DuMont: And years later, uh in 1954.

[5:24] Rob Russo: Now, now this I love, and this actually, you know, has been confirmed by multiple sources.

[5:27] Jamie DuMont: Um, true fact.

[5:31] Rob Russo: Um, Arthur Lawrence and Leonard Bernstein found themselves uh relaxing poolside uh at the Beverly Hills Hotel, as you do.

[5:39] Jamie DuMont: As as one does, naturally.

[5:41] Rob Russo: It must have been so glamorous in 1954, can you imagine?

[5:44] Jamie DuMont: Yes, I can actually.

[5:46] Rob Russo: And you know, they were both out in Hollywood working on different projects.

[5:50] Jamie DuMont: And you know, they just started talking about you know life and such, and they both brought up uh that project that they had abandoned, and they happened to have a newspaper there uh while they were, you know, poolside that had on its on its front page um, you know, a headline about street riots between Chicano Americans in Los Angeles.

[6:10] Rob Russo: And it was sort of one of those aha moments, right?

[6:13] Jamie DuMont: Where uh they thought, oh my gosh, we were all wrong about Jews and Catholics.

[6:17] Rob Russo: This is the real story.

[6:19] Jamie DuMont: We should we should set it among you know immigrants uh to America and and make it this, you know, this piece about um, you know, these themes, right?

[6:28] Rob Russo: Of of racism and immigration and integration and all those challenges.

[6:32] Jamie DuMont: And it was something that was lifted right from the headlines, not you know, literally right from the headlines.

[6:37] Rob Russo: Ripped from the headlines.

[6:38] Jamie DuMont: Ripped from the headlines, instead of them trying to like, you know, play on a on a a bit of a trope that you know had had existed for some time.

[7:01] Rob Russo: For me, what's been so fascinating about really diving into the research on West Side Story, which is a you know, obviously it's a show we'd both know a fair amount about, but like when you do research on something, you always learn so much more than you've, you know, than you thought you knew.

[7:17] Jamie DuMont: And for me, it's Arthur Lawrence was really such a driving force.

[7:22] Rob Russo: He wasn't just the book writer, you know. Everyone always uh, you know, it's always Jerome Robbins was the you know, the taskmaster and the genius behind it all, and Leonard Bernstein was the music.

[7:33] Jamie DuMont: But Arthur Lawrence really like put this thing together in a lot of ways and was uh oftentimes the glue and the force of some of the most important pieces of of the creation of West Side Story, which I just found fascinating.

[7:48] Rob Russo: I don't think he gets enough credit.

[7:50] Jamie DuMont: No, he really doesn't.

[7:51] Rob Russo: And and one of the most notable things about West Side Story, as you know, as we're moving into the the actual creation of it, the writing of it, the book is just it is so famously terse.

[8:00] Jamie DuMont: I think Steven Sondheim jokes that you know the only book that might be shorter is the book to Follies.

[8:05] Rob Russo: And both of them are notable for not having too much action.

[8:08] Jamie DuMont: You know, when you think about West Side Story, a lot happens, but also not a lot happens, right?

[8:12] Rob Russo: It takes a place over a rather condensed period of time, and um, you know, there's there's a relatively few number of scenes.

[8:19] Jamie DuMont: But what I find so amazing about Arthur Lawrence's contribution to the piece is how humble he was as a collaborator.

[8:27] Rob Russo: And what I mean by that is he was the one so often who was saying, no, this shouldn't be a scene, this should be a dance.

[8:34] Jamie DuMont: Or please take my three pages of dialogue and make it into one song.

[8:38] Rob Russo: You know, and that generosity and that commitment to uh to to the material and and to letting the piece be the piece, as opposed to I'm a writer, and you know, I need to show off that I can write great characters, especially because he's adapting Shakespeare, right?

[8:54] Jamie DuMont: Let's not forget that the framework he was working with is Shakespeare, right?

[8:58] Rob Russo: Famously verbose.

[9:00] Jamie DuMont: Um, and yet he's reduced all of Shakespeare to what is one of the shortest books in all of musical theater, and it is so damn effective.

[9:10] Rob Russo: There's not a single wasted word um in that in that in that show.

[9:15] Jamie DuMont: Well, Sondheim said something very interesting about Arthur's work and and how they got to you know writing the songs, how how Bernstein and Sondheim wrote the songs, and Arthur would write pages and pages of dialogue, and they would sometimes lift directly from that for songs and so on and so forth.

[9:32] Rob Russo: And Sondheim said, and also Sondheim sort of famously wouldn't start writing any lyrics until a character was created or dialogue was written for that character, because how can you write lyrics for somebody if you don't know how they speak, you know, in in the course of the piece.

[9:47] Jamie DuMont: But what Sondheim said was that he often felt that the way they wrote the songs was rating the dialogue, which I thought was a really fun way to put it.

[9:56] Rob Russo: Will it be yes it will?

[9:59] Jamie DuMont: Maybe just by Holden still, it'll be there.

[10:05] Rob Russo: Come on, something come on in.

[10:07] Jamie DuMont: Don't be shy, me, a guy pull up the chair.

[10:18] Rob Russo: And something great is coming.

[10:25] Jamie DuMont: Who knows?

[10:29] Rob Russo: It's only just out of reach, down the park, on a beach, maybe tonight.

[10:29] Jamie DuMont: Maybe tonight.

[10:46] Rob Russo: When I step away from West Side Story, what always strikes me is the personnel involved in its call in the creation of it, right?

[10:54] Jamie DuMont: There's not another musical I can think of from the you know so-called golden era where you have this particular group of you know iconic legendary collaborators working at the peak of their power, right?

[11:08] Rob Russo: It's not just that you had Jerome Robbins, it's you had the best Jerome Robbins, right?

[11:13] Jamie DuMont: You know, and I mean the list, right?

[11:15] Rob Russo: It's Steven Sondheim on lyrics, Arthur Lawrence on book, Hal Prince producing it with his partner Robert Griffith, Leonard Bernstein uh writing the score, and then Jerome Robbins, who created it, directed it, and choreographed it.

[11:28] Jamie DuMont: I mean, what?

[11:30] Rob Russo: It's wild.

[11:31] Jamie DuMont: And don't forget my personal favorite, which I also didn't know or remember, Irene Sharaff on costumes, the sort of famous Hollywood costume designer.

[11:40] Rob Russo: There you go.

[11:40] Jamie DuMont: Yeah, and Oliver Smith on sets.

[11:43] Rob Russo: Oliver Smith, right?

[11:44] Jamie DuMont: Uh, you know, so you just had this incredible confluence of talent that you know uh that came together in some cases by you know happenstance, right?

[11:55] Rob Russo: Arthur Lawrence happened to run into Stephen Sondheim at a party and was like, oh my gosh, we're looking for a lyricist.

[12:01] Jamie DuMont: Why didn't I think of you?

[12:02] Rob Russo: You know, like ha.

[12:03] Jamie DuMont: You know they you know they had first reached out to uh Comden and Green, right?

[12:07] Rob Russo: Which can you imagine if Comden and Green had I mean, you know, they're two of the greatest lyricists of all time, but this was not the project for them.

[12:14] Jamie DuMont: No, not at all.

[12:15] Rob Russo: And you know, things work out for a reason, oftentimes.

[12:18] Jamie DuMont: Oh, of course, right?

[12:20] Rob Russo: But it wasn't always a happy experience.

[12:22] Jamie DuMont: It really wasn't.

[12:22] Rob Russo: There was there was a lot of strife.

[12:24] Jamie DuMont: No, of course not.

[12:25] Rob Russo: And I was just about to say, you know, speaking of um, you know, opening on Broadway, you know, first they had to try out uh in Washington and in Philadelphia, and they had to get there, right?

[12:34] Jamie DuMont: And getting there was not easy because Jerome Robbins was famously uh very difficult to work with.

[12:40] Rob Russo: Um, I love this.

[12:42] Jamie DuMont: Leonard Bernstein said years later, I will never, never work with Jerome Robbins again, as long as I live.

[12:52] Rob Russo: Then after a long pause, for a while.

[12:57] Jamie DuMont: Boy, boy, crazy boy.

[12:59] Rob Russo: Stay loose, boy.

[13:03] Jamie DuMont: Buzz it, easy does it.

[13:05] Rob Russo: Turn off the juice boy.

[13:12] Jamie DuMont: Just play it cool, boy.

[13:15] Rob Russo: Read cool.

[13:36] Jamie DuMont: Well, because he was a genius, right? And there was a certain impatience on the part of Jerome Robbins that probably made him insufferable in the room, but is what made him such a great collaborator, and that is he wanted to get to the best thing.

[13:49] Rob Russo: And if the best thing meant that he had to tell Arthur Lawrence to rewrite a scene ten times, he would tell him to rewrite a scene ten times. Or, you know, if he would have Stephen Sondheim write a different set of lyrics for "America" just to see what that would look like, right? He wanted to see all possibilities, is what Steven Sondheim said. And that can be really, really frustrating when you're working with someone who's never satisfied in the moment. But when you step back from it, having to imagine all possibilities is what gives you "West Side Story," which is a collection of the best possibilities, the best choices that could be made.

[14:27] Jamie DuMont: It was instantly, you know, somewhat of a sensation. Um, again, because it was so groundbreaking. No one had seen this type of theater before, this type of musical theater. Very positive reviews, uh, for the most part. Uh, the New York Times, the Daily News, uh, wrote rather, uh, it's funny to read them because you know the way reviews are written are so different now. Um, but very positive reviews. Uh, Walter Kerr was a little less impressed by, um, basically anything that Jerome Robbins hadn't touched. So, uh, the book and the lyrics and, you know, all that. But for the most part, great reviews, very positive reviews, but very mixed audience reaction.

[15:05] Rob Russo: There's a very famous story where Sondheim's sort of in the back and, uh, and he's, you know, fussing about or whatever, watching the show, and a patron gets up and they lock eyes with Sondheim as they're leaving, and they say to Steven, "Don't ask." Which, I don't know, that's hard stuff. But I think that's always the case when you're breaking ground, right? You're always going to up, you know, when you disrupt, as the kids like to say now, you disrupt, you upset people, and that's how change on all forms happens.

[15:38] Jamie DuMont: And I think that what they were doing was, I don't want you know, by our standards, it's not at all shocking. Um, and I've said this about the 2020 revival, right? I feel like that was also met with a lot of, um, a lot of resistance and negative criticism, and we'll get to that a little bit later. But I've always said that I felt it's very similar to the reception that the original production got, which was people didn't know what to make of it, and it made them uncomfortable, and they hadn't seen two people dead at the end of, uh, the first act, uh, in a Broadway musical before. It was groundbreaking.

[16:12] Rob Russo: And for a show to be so dark and so, you know, just tackling contemporary themes, you know, obviously musicals had grappled with important and heavy subject matter before. I mean, "Carousel" obviously is a very famous example of that. Or "Oklahoma" for that matter.

[16:29] Jamie DuMont: Or "Oklahoma," exactly. "Showboat," you know, or dating back to "Showboat," right, exactly. Um, and so, you know, it wasn't necessarily just that one aspect of it. It was the total presentation, right? And what Steven Sondheim says is that the achievement of "West Side Story" is not necessarily, um, the lyrics are great or the book is great or the choreography is great or the score is great. What he says about the piece, and I think there's a lot of truth in this, and part of it I think is just him being very critical of his work. Um, he says that it's actually not a very good musical if you tear it apart, that the individual elements are great, but that, you know, uh, what it represents, rather, is a style of theater making.

[17:11] Rob Russo: That the whole piece itself is of a whole, right? That it is groundbreaking in the sense of the, um, the synthesis of it all and the way, you know, all the pieces work together to create an event, um, which was a style of theater making that again, you know, might seem somewhat, um, you know, okay, who cares to us today, because so much of theater is that. But at the time in 1957, to have a piece that integrated, uh, that seamlessly integrated and was innovative from start to finish, that hadn't been done.

[17:48] Jamie DuMont: And when I, you know, when I think about the landmark musicals, obviously, you know, it's "Showboat," it's "Oklahoma," then it's "West Side Story," right? You know, from the "Oklahoma" sort of Rogers and Hammerstein revolution to 1957, you know, there isn't a whole lot going on that's notable from an innovative standpoint. There's a lot of great musicals, obviously, it's the golden age. But in terms of pushing the envelope and putting the ball forward or whatever, you know, tortured metaphor you want to use, um, "West Side Story" is it. And that, you know, it doesn't happen really again in a big way until probably "Cabaret" in 1966.

[18:24] Rob Russo: No, I agree with you. And you know, Arthur Lawrence said something that I thought was very interesting, which was what we did stylistically with "West Side Story" was take every musical theater technique as far as it could be taken. Scene, song, and dance were integrated seamlessly. We did it all better than anyone had done before.

[18:41] Jamie DuMont: Well, I mean, that just sounds like Arthur, but what he's saying is so true, right? It's what you just said, and it's so interesting. I also find it really fascinating that Arthur is incredibly critical of his work in "West Side Story" to a certain degree. Sondheim is very critical of his work. I think all four men don't love the piece as much as it's beloved, right? They all are, and I think this is part of, you know, the genius persona, right? You're never satisfied with anything. But it does seem to me that in all the research I've done, the only person who seems genuinely confidently happy with their work on "West Side Story" is Leonard Bernstein.

[19:21] Rob Russo: He's the only one who—and this is so fascinating—uh, he never conducted the entire score or the show until 1984, where they did a complete recording with, of course, opera stars. So Leonard finally got his way.

[19:40] Jamie DuMont: His opera.

[19:41] Rob Russo: His opera. And you listen to it. It's on Spotify. And there's a documentary, which I watched last night. And it's actually the documentary's great because you get to see Leonard Bernstein in action, which you rarely do in a kind of relaxed state. He's not conducting, you know, on stage. There it's all rehearsal footage. So it's a very different, um, side of him. But it doesn't work as a— with opera singers, right? The whole thing falls apart. So they were all right at the beginning to steer him from that.

[20:09] Jamie DuMont: Yeah, well, you're right to point out that of all the collaborators, um, you know, Bernstein was the most, uh, proud of his work. And the evidence of that is the fact that he wouldn't write another musical again until 1976. And he's said before that he thought that, you know, "West Side Story" was it, right? That like they had perfected the musical theater, that they had done something that no one else had ever done before. And his great disappointment was that no one else picked up the reins and ran with it, right? He thought that after "West Side Story," there would— that America, that musical theater itself would change as a form and that other people would start writing musicals in the way that they had, and people didn't.

[20:52] Rob Russo: And you know, that was always a bit of a disappointment to him. And to that point, you know, people didn't really know what to do with "West Side Story," and it very famously did not win Best Musical in 1958. Um, what did, Rob? By "The Music Man," right?

[21:06] Jamie DuMont: Which is like sort of the antithesis of "West Side Story." Two incredibly crafted musicals, very different in style.

[21:14] Rob Russo: They could not be more different in style. And what's fascinating, I didn't realize this about the 1958 Tony Awards, is that the only performer who was nominated and did not win was Carol Lawrence as Maria. That the show, you know, the show got six nominations total, won only two awards for choreography and that set design by Oliver Smith, but no nomination for Chita Rivera or Larry Kurt. You know, it was Carol Lawrence who was the real, you know, breakout star of "West Side Story" in 1957. All the reviews are all about Carol Lawrence and her incredible performance.

[21:51] Jamie DuMont: And it's of course captured on the cast album.

[22:37] Rob Russo: I just find it so fascinating that this, you know, this totemic musical of the American musical theater was not given a lot of awards love and didn't run as long as, you know, as it might have, you know, a 732 performances, uh, from 1957 to 1959. That's not a terribly long time for what is a groundbreaking, you know, musical and such a beloved musical. Uh, and in fact, the revival in 2009 ran longer than the original Broadway production. And when it moved to London in 1958, it was a bigger hit there than it was in New York. It ran over a thousand performances in London and won all the awards. It's fascinating to me that the Brits were more embracing of this show in its original form than the Americans were.

[23:25] Jamie DuMont: Yes, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was quite successful on tour as well, right? Like it did very well on tour, and I think the tour even came back in on Broadway for 1960.

[23:36] Rob Russo: Yeah.

[23:36] Jamie DuMont: In a limited engagement.

[23:38] Rob Russo: And then it was, you know, it was revived quite quickly, right? Both at Lincoln Center Theater and, uh, City Center Opera.

[23:46] Jamie DuMont: Um, I think City Center Light Opera came first in '64 and then '68 at Lincoln Center Theater. And of course, they did a lot of that in those days, right? Like those weren't Broadway revivals, right? They were different companies doing them. And you know, Lincoln Center Theater did quite a bit of that. They did "King and I" and "Carousel" and a bunch of shows, but so it was not unheard of. But it's interesting that they took, particularly with Lincoln Center Theater, they took, um, "West Side Story" to do as opposed to what was considered a more golden age sort of classic musical, um, or we would call it a golden age classic musical now.

[24:21] Rob Russo: And then of course the first major revival was in 1980.

[24:24] Jamie DuMont: Who was in that revival, Jamie?

[24:27] Rob Russo: Oh, Debbie Allen.

[24:30] Jamie DuMont: And Josie DeGuzman. And, um, I actually saw that revival, um, that's why in Los Angeles. I don't think I saw Debbie Allen. I don't remember if it was the—I mean, I know I saw Debbie Allen. I don't know if it was the entire original company, but also Brent Barrett had a small part. And of course, my favorite Harold and Blackwell was in it. And Steven Bogardis. So it was a pretty good cast.

[24:55] Rob Russo: You know, just looping backwards, because you know, casting is like my all-time favorite thing. And I learned this last night in the wee hours when I was researching it. Do you know who was an original member of the Jets on Broadway?

[25:09] Jamie DuMont: Martin Charnon.

[25:10] Rob Russo: Martin.

[25:10] Jamie DuMont: I had no idea.

[25:12] Rob Russo: Yeah. And I think Elliot Feld was in it either originally or as a replacement, which is pretty wild.

[25:19] Jamie DuMont: Yeah.

[25:19] Rob Russo: It's amazing if you dig into those old cast lists, how many people. I mean, Bob Avian was in the 1960 production and he had done the tour.

[25:27] Jamie DuMont: Right.

[25:27] Rob Russo: Um, Valerie Petiford was an Anita in the '87 tour with soap star Jack Wagner. Although I don't, yeah, I think he was a soap star at that time.

[25:37] Jamie DuMont: I would love to see Valerie Petterford's Anita.

[25:40] Rob Russo: Would it imagine?

[25:41] Jamie DuMont: Wow, I can actually imagine how—talk about good casting, yeah.

[25:45] Rob Russo: Oh well, so that was a landmark revival in 1980. Um, and Jerome Robbins, you know, directed that production. And then the 2009 revival directed by Arthur Lawrence.

[25:56] Jamie DuMont: It's sort of funny how each of them got an opportunity to, you know, sort of put their stamp on it. Um, and the '09 revival, much of it exactly like the 1957 production, did its tryout in Washington, DC, and that's where I saw it. And it's funny now, you know, through the lens of the 2020 revival to look at the 2009 revival, it might seem somewhat tweaked, but I remember sitting, uh, in DC, uh, seeing that production, and at that point, it was the most sort of realistic or authentic, uh, presentation of "West Side Story" that had been done on stage.

[26:31] Rob Russo: And that was Arthur's point in doing the revival. He had always felt that they, you know, looking backwards in 1957, they really didn't have the tools or the ability to make it as authentic as it could be. And so that was the goal with this production, so much so that they brought in Lin-Manuel Miranda to translate some of the dialogue and famously some of the lyrics to Spanish, so that, uh, members of the Sharks, uh, and the Puerto Ricans could speak authentically as they would, you know, when they weren't, uh, interacting with English speakers.

[27:04] ♪ Musical number: "Tonight" — performed by the cast of West Side Story ♪

[27:33] Ivo van Hove: Well they began it so losculpables and we said lots of some momentum for us tonight. So that was another aspect of the production. Personally, I didn't think changing the language was all that successful dramatically. But I think because they didn't commit to it fully. I feel like exactly there was a lot of feedback or flack about that, and I think that they sort of somewhere they landed somewhere in the middle in terms of like not committing to it fully, but not not getting rid of it outright. And so it felt half-hearted, and I think it wasn't successful. I think that if they had really gone for it, it would have been more interesting. Um I don't know if it would have been better or not, because we didn't see that, but I think it would have been more daring and certainly a committed choice.

What I remember being most notable about that production was how young the Jets and the Sharks were. They actually looked for the first time like teenagers. You know, you watch the movie, they're like a bunch of 40-year-olds. Um, you know, I mean, it's so funny, right? But they actually were young performers, you know, playing these young characters. And that was thrilling um to see, you know, that energy brought to the piece and that aesthetic, right? Of having young performers play these young parts.

[28:52] Jamie DuMont: I agree with that. I'm with you on that.

[28:54] Rob Russo: Well, and that brings us to 2020, right? Because that's certainly a huge aspect of the current revival, uh, which is the casting of a very young cast, a very diverse cast. If you're listening to this and you didn't see this uh this production, because unfortunately, you know, it only had 24 performances before Broadway shut down in March. Had a very long preview period of 78 performances from uh December to February. Um in some ways it ran longer than some shows.

[29:23] Jamie DuMont: Right?

[29:23] Rob Russo: Well, that's true. It had a yeah, it had a preview period longer than a lot of shows run. Um but um, you know, this is uh the product of our our first guest um today, uh Eva Van Hove, the um very innovative autorial uh director who has certainly brought his stamp uh to New York over the past uh two decades. And uh his style of theater making is so so distinctive, you know, and this production just flows from that artistic stamp. Everything about it uh sort of you know eviscerated any any conception you might have, any relationship you might have with the original piece to get back to the root of it and then rebuild it anew for a modern audience for a modern sensibility. The show is set in the present among uh a a community that looks that looks like the community in New York in the present, uh that is to say very diverse.

There is an intensity and a ferocity and a danger uh to this presentation that, you know, if if Arthur Lawrence was not satisfied with the authenticity or the realism in 1957, oh boy, it's a shame he didn't get to see this production because in many ways it's almost too real, right? Uh it is uh, you know, uh a a a trademark of Eva Van Hov's um uh from time to time is his use of uh video um you know live filmmaking um in the course of of the evening of watching a show and um you know there's incredible film work done um both pre-recorded but in the moment uh in this production that brings you right up close to the actors during uh you know the rumble or um you know during uh several of the dance scenes and to be able to see the show that close up uh a show that is so um you know so violent right I mean violence is is is key to the plot key to the story and it really unfolds in a way that is I don't want to say provocative because that feels like such an overused word but if you have any sort of relationship with West Side Story, this is not a genteel West Side Story.

[31:29] Jamie DuMont: And it gives us uh circling back to something you said, Jamie, um that you've said before, you know, it gives us the experience of what it must have felt like to see West Side Story in nineteen fifty seven because this production, as much as we loved it, not everybody agreed with us.

[31:44] Rob Russo: And there was there was a lot of debate um and a lot of ink spilled, and you know, a lot of and there still is people are still talking about it.

[31:52] Jamie DuMont: Yes, well, they're not just talking, they're arguing.

[31:54] Rob Russo: Arguing, right?

[31:56] Jamie DuMont: Um, and and so again, you know, I take that as you know, I love that. I love when you can have a juicy argument with someone about a piece of theater. To me, that means it's really doing something, it's really going somewhere, it's really pushing the form or saying something. That was one of the most thrilling parts of this production is getting to not just see it, but then talk about it with people. And you know, we did a whole episode of uh Stage Left in which we talked about it, and we've certainly had our own conversations. And one of the reasons we were excited to have Ivo uh as a guest on this episode is so that we could talk directly with the source uh about this production and about some of the aspects of it that have been touch points for conversation.

[32:33] Rob Russo: Absolutely. And before we get to Evo and you give us a little bit more information on who he is, um those that don't know, I do have to tell you this, Rob.

[32:42] Jamie DuMont: This 2020 production of West Side Story is not the first contemporary modernized production of West Side Story that I have seen. So back in 1984, when I was in high school, Loyola High School did a breakdance version of West Side Story.

[33:00] Rob Russo: Oh yes, where they replaced quite wrongfully so, if that's the right word, in in a in in really what was an embarrassment of well, of embarrassing things. Um, yeah, they replaced all the Jerome Robbins choreography with breakdance, which for you kids who don't know, breakdance was a very popular dance form in the uh in the 80s.

[33:24] Jamie DuMont: And so you had a bunch of white kids playing white kids and playing Puerto Ricans breakdancing. It was wrong on every level.

[33:31] Rob Russo: Yeah, well, you know, as as Steven Sondheim might put it, you explored all possibilities, you know.

[33:37] Jamie DuMont: And yes, what you learned, what you learned was that that possibility was the wrong choice.

[33:41] Rob Russo: But you know right. There are wrong answers. There are bad choices.

[33:46] Jamie DuMont: Oh, yes.

[33:46] Rob Russo: Oh yes.

[33:47] Jamie DuMont: Well, uh, thankfully, you know, there is this incredible new production uh directed by uh Eva Van Hove with choreography by Ann Teresa de Kirsmacher, who is in her own right, you know, a a titan uh of the dance world and an extraordinary choreographer. If you haven't seen any of her work, uh check it out on YouTube. I'm sure there's good stuff. Um but Eva Van Hove, like I've said, you know, is an internationally acclaimed uh Belgian theater director who has such a distinct style of theater making that really has been you know changing the face of theater, certainly in New York over the past two decades and um you know internationally as well. Uh since 2001, he's been the artistic director of the Tannyel group Amsterdam, uh, which is the biggest repertory theater company in the Netherlands.

[34:29] Rob Russo: Um he first made a splash in New York with his productions of Hedda Gobbler, The Little Foxes, and Scenes from a Marriage at uh New York Theater Workshop downtown, before making his Broadway debut in 2015 uh with his young Vic production of A View from the Bridge, uh, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play.

[34:47] Jamie DuMont: I'm still thinking about that production.

[34:49] Rob Russo: Oh my god.

[34:49] Jamie DuMont: Um I I don't know if it was recorded or if it'll be performed again anywhere, but if you ever have an opportunity to see it, it uh was sort of like changed me.

[34:57] Rob Russo: And I I don't mean that like hyperbolically, I mean it like quite literally.

[35:00] Jamie DuMont: But in the years since uh on Broadway, uh he's directed The Crucible and Network, uh, and now this you know vibrant reimagining of West Side Story, which opened mere weeks before Broadway shut down, and like we said, hopefully we'll be back when Broadway returns.

[35:15] Rob Russo: So we had an incredible opportunity to chat with with Ivo. Uh, should we get to it?

[35:20] Jamie DuMont: Yes, yes, yes, because it's uh it's it's really fantastic.

[35:45] Rob Russo: Well, thank you so much for joining us. Though you've directed plenty of operas, uh you've you rarely stage musicals. So we're we're curious, out of all the classic American musicals, what drew you to West Side Story?

[35:56] Ivo van Hove: It's well, what it talks about, the themes. Uh, and I thought these themes, in all its brutality and what it tells about society these days, would fit very well the 20th 21st century where where we're living at this moment. And apart from that, of course, because when you do a musical, it's quite good, it's an understatement. If you have fabulous music, which of course, of course, this is uh it's the I've heard now these songs uh so many times over the last uh two years, and I never got bored with not one of them. On the contrary, I was looking every night with the during the previews, I was looking forward to hear, oh, that's coming up, and that's coming up, oh, this is coming up, you know. So uh I must say, this is really uh in that way a masterpiece on itself.

[36:45] Jamie DuMont: How familiar were you with West Side Story before tackling the project?

[36:50] Ivo van Hove: Well, uh, as every European, you know, when you were young, it was you went to this to see the movie, you know. You know, it's not uh I think it became in Europe, it became famous not through the through the theater production, but through the movie. And the movie, of course, was at that time, it was like if you have seen it once, you will never forget it. The cars, you know, the the different camera point of views, low, very low a lot of times, you know, which was very unusual at that time, and also very high, bird per bird perspective. Um, so it was like like quite inventive, uh the the movie on itself, I think. So that's the way I got in touch with it, and that I that I know it. I never saw it on stage actually before I directed it myself.

[37:33] Jamie DuMont: That's incredible.

[37:34] Ivo van Hove: So you you didn't have necessarily an idea of how it was done on stage to sort of taint your own vision, right?

[37:40] Ivo van Hove: Well, no, but I knew of course that that the Jerome Roberts did had had also done the stage version. So I knew, of course, that that the way that the scenes were conceptualized, or uh, you know, that they will be the same, uh more or less. But I don't, you know, you know, for me it's like it's it's the material that interests me. I'm not making a revival of an existing production, I'm making a total new revival based on the fact that I think that this music in connection to the themes, to the characters, to the to the energy in it, can communicate today, you know, and that's the way I how I think. And I I never have a problem that there has been a masterpiece before me. You know, I when I did Network, you know, Network is also a very famous movie from the 70s. I I'm not so worried about this as because I think, well, this is me, this is what I can bring together with my team, together with all these fabulous uh singers and dancers and actors. That's what we can do with it, you know, at this time.

[38:37] Jamie DuMont: So I I never go back to how did they do it in those days? I read a lot about it, though. I never read a lot uh about how the music came together, how the the story developed, you know. So there's fab there's great material, I have to say, background material about this, and that helped me a lot. And I discovered that my views were not so far away from Arthur Lawrence's views, you know. Uh who wrote the text, the book, you know. And when I see what he is, what he wanted, what which was not always what what happened in the end, the um he is he is pretty close, or I'm pretty close to what to what he already thought of it a long time ago.

[39:21] Jamie DuMont: So, to you, is is West Side Story a love story or a story about racial differences and inequalities?

[39:29] Ivo van Hove: Uh well, uh it's both. It's both. And and as a director, you can you have them you have to give them equal uh importance because to ignore the love story would be a shame, and but to ignore the war story would be uh uh as big a shame as as the other, and that was for me very important. You know, that this war on stage, as I call it, which is a tricky thing to do, violence on stage is not so easy to make it believable, and and and even less when you use cameras as I do, because then you're very close uh on the bodies. Uh, and that was for me the big challenge. Uh, that the fight at the end of the first act, that the big uh rum uh rumble that that would be believable and not like an aesthetical experience.

It should be an aesthetical experience, but also you should feel the physical violence and the fact that well, there's two but two dead bodies at the end of that scene, so it's not a joke. Uh and uh I remember very well because the Jerome Robbins uh dance there is fabulous, but I decided very early on not to make a dance out of that, you know, and to make to make it into a real stage fight.

[40:41] Ivo van Hove: Don't watch that don't push me. Come on, you bull out.

[40:54] Jamie DuMont: Well, I have to say, you know, I've seen West Side Story so many times in so many different versions, and the love story uh really really struck me this time.

[41:04] Ivo van Hove: And I was so moved by the relationship between Tony and Maria in a way that I have never felt it before. I mean, I truly, I was Jamie can attest, he sat next to me. I was weeping, you know, in the end in a way that I'm always moved, but this was different. It felt more real, I guess, and more powerful. Well, I think I had two fabulous people, you know, to do it with, Shireen and Isaac for starters, and Isaac, we found him very early in the process, you know. But Shireen, that was really only a few weeks before we started because everybody knows that to find a Maria on stage, because when you make a movie, that's easier, right? Because you can duck, she doesn't need to sing, you know, necessarily, but in this, on a stage, you have to be able to sing, to dance, and to act at a high level, and you need somebody very young, yeah.

You know, that's the so that's and it's a soprano, it's actually a voice. We talk about the opera, it's an opera voice that you need. So that's what I realized after having seen tens and tens and tens and tens of Marias. You know, at a certain moment I said, I think we have to go for opera schools where people are in a school, and then that was when we found her, you know. We found her in another, yeah, Julia. Because vocally the part is really, it's a huge challenge to make that happen. But to make the story happen, I think we made two crucial decisions. Well, decisions, it's all in the text, but it doesn't always pop out. I think for Shireen, for instance, for Maria, it was very clear that she had made, she has come finally to America, she's only there for a few weeks.

It's very important. She's only there, she's not there for a long time. She's only there for a few weeks, and she doesn't want to give in, you know, to let it go and make her life like mediocre as it was in Puerto Rico for her. She says it also, I came from there, I'm coming here now. You know, I want a different life. That's what my choice is. That makes her a very strong character, you know, from the beginning. And Shireen grabbed that very well. And with Isaac, I told him in the first rehearsal, I said, well, don't forget that you were the gang leader just a few weeks ago. You were the gang leader, and you can kill. Well, they are not killers, but you know, he is kind of, he is a violent guy, he has aggression in him.

So he didn't become the Romeo kind of dreamer, you know, that he is. I think he's played a lot like that and I think we didn't do that and Isaac also brought it at another level and you know, the whole thing Maria momentito Maria Maria it is dangerous I'm not one of them you are but to me you are not just as I am one of them Maruka see young papa Maruka his pet name for me I like him he will like me no he's like Bernardo afraid that's what made the love between the two of them also really important for both of them not only because it's a love but also because it's meaningful, it's their life good not sleep well and when you dream dream and that sense of time.

[43:53] Jamie DuMont: You mentioned that Maria's only been in the country for a few weeks, but also I feel like watching your production, there was almost like there was a clock going right from the very beginning, and you feel this sense of urgency, and you feel that time is running out for both of them, even if you don't for some reason know the story and how it ends. The way that you've staged it really hammers that point home, which just also makes everything feel so much more tragic.

[46:09] Ivo van Hove: Yeah, I think that's totally right what you're saying, and it was also one of my, well when I asked Scott if he wanted to produce this, that was one of my basic things that I said I want this urgency and I want to try to do it without intermission because that's the crucial decision. If you go into an intermission, you come back and you know you have the time to have a drink, now the beat, the heat goes on, you know. And of course, I know that a lot of people hate me for having skipped I Feel Pretty, but I think I Feel Pretty is there. It's a very pretty song, you know, although not everybody who was part of the original team loved it so much. And of course, it's like a typical beginning after an intermission, you know.

Okay, nothing is wrong. You know, so by cutting that, you know, you went into the juggernaut version of West Side Story, you know, it became and that was one thing. And the other thing is indeed that I tried to make transitions as short as possible, you know, and that you are always in the next scene before you realize the other scene has stopped. And so this feeling of urgency, we really worked on that a lot. To don't make it longer if it can be shorter, you know, so that there's no time for thinking for these young people. There is no time for thinking, you know, they just have been fighting. You feel them breathing still, you know, when you go in intermission, then they're clean afterwards.

But now the sun was still there, the rain, they were wet as hell. And so you felt them, and then they had to go into the Odyssey and sing G Mr. Officer Kropke, you know. And so this it became so charged with Kropke, full of anger and full of aggression and full of violence. The trouble is he's crazy, the trouble is he drinks, the trouble is he's lazy. The trouble is he stinks, the trouble is he's growing, the trouble is he's grown, we got troubles of our own. Officer, we're down on our knees. Because no one wants a fellow with the social disease. We Officer Kropke, what are we to do? Officer Kropke, crop you.

[48:37] Jamie DuMont: Speaking about the casting of the show, I know the omission of I Feel Pretty is one thing a lot of people have talked about. A lot of people have also talked about the fact that you very notably have cast the Jets and the Sharks as being multi-ethnic, you know, white, black, Latino, Asian. Can you talk a little bit about why you made that choice?

[48:56] Ivo van Hove: No, that's I have to correct you on this in the way that the Sharks are not only Puerto Ricans, but they are all Latinos and Latinos, Latinx. So that was really a clear choice from the beginning. And the Jets, that's you know, the Jets, anyway, also in the original, Tony is a Polish immigrant. So they're all in, you know, they are immigrants. So that was my choice to make there, the America that you see on the street that you see in the subway that you encounter, but no Latinos there, no, no, no Latinas and Latinos. So that was the division. And I think you know, when you pretend to make a West Side Story for the 21st century, how to do it different because it's not a tension. Also now these days, the tensions are not between the white people and the Latinos, it's much more complex and it shifts all the time. So I thought it was very important to have the multicultural society that America is on the stage.

[49:58] Jamie DuMont: Yeah, and you know, to me, what was so powerful is that I feel like that multi-ethnic casting of the Jets sort of lays bare the lie that there is that there really is a difference between the groups, as you said. There, you know, we're all immigrants in America except for the Native Americans, so that idea only became even more powerful.

[50:18] Ivo van Hove: Yeah, and perhaps it's a little bit utopian, but okay. That's what theatre is for, also.

[50:24] Jamie DuMont: Well, Rob and I were very fortunate to be at the first preview of the show, and then to be at opening night. And I actually came one more time in between. So, you know, the show had an exceptionally long preview period, 78 performances. So I were curious to know, you know, we certainly noticed things that were different. From your perspective, what was the biggest aspect of the production that you worked on honing from that first preview to opening night?

[50:50] Ivo van Hove: Yeah, but you the first preview, it was clear that all the energy was in the right place, and that you know, that was very clear for me. So yeah, the challenge was not. And I think the biggest changes that the position of the dances on stage became more solid, you know. That was a big change. I have to think, you know, because I tend to forget these things what I changed about the what we didn't change. I think drastically what you guys found that the 3D changed between the first and the opening night.

[51:31] Jamie DuMont: Well, certainly some of the movement, of course, as you've just alluded to, but also some of the video work, the imagery itself.

[51:39] Ivo van Hove: Oh yeah, but that was a specific images. Yeah, but that was for me not a change because it was not ready. You know, there were a lot of stake, not stakeholders, placeholders, placeholders in the show at that moment. So that we knew. And but I think the live video was pretty much in shape at that moment, but it was like the pre the things that we had to pre-record that all had to happen. For instance, the whole during America that was a pure placeholder in the first time, you know. It was not like not meant to be this way, so and also with Kropke, that were the two biggest changes in the video, and they were only finished in January because we didn't have time to finish it, you know. They had to do that over the Christmas time.

[52:22] Jamie DuMont: I will say for me, the biggest change I noticed was with Cool. I felt like opening night Cool was fantastic, but it wasn't fully, it felt like it was not a part of the show. It felt a little bit like it was its own dance piece, and then by the time I saw it again at opening, it really had integrated all of the elements of everything around it into that number and I thought that was really fun to watch.

[52:35] Ivo van Hove: Totally agree, yeah that was I totally agree that was a finished that was a not finished dance on the first preview. The others were pretty much finished but this one, it didn't have a real ending, it didn't have a real beginning also me my work, you know, I had to integrate the transition between where this theater where the dance takes over step by step I had to be involved more, you know, together with Anna Teresa to work on it together with her not separate with her, you know, and that so the integration between theater and dance became much more intense and I think it became a much more and the biggest difference is that Anna Teresa decided to bring in the women.

[52:35] Jamie DuMont: It makes me wonder what that process was like you and Anna Teresa working together. They're very different functions, director and choreographer, but yet you have to act as one particularly with West Side Story because the language of the dance is as important as the language of the text or the overall storytelling. So I'm curious what that process for the two of you was like.

[52:35] Ivo van Hove: Well, it was our first project ever together, so it was and it was the biggest one both of us ever did because I made a lot of big shows at all to this button but not on this big level. So in the beginning, of course, it was like well, not separate, in a way that we have been one year and a half before we started the rehearsals, we started doing auditions and workshop, five weeks workshop we did. So and I was there all the time. I was at the workshop. So and the workshop was for me great because I had decided not to do scenes, so to really focus on the dance because the four big dances in the whole thing.

[54:50] Ivo van Hove: So we got and I was sitting there, and I called myself like the choreography whisperer, you know, like a horse whisperer, but then different. And so we got to know each other there, also what I liked, what I didn't like, you know, and I felt immediately that she was very open to that process. Uh, and of course, had her opinions about it because she's a very strong personality, uh, but not a strong personality. In listen, this is my thing, you're your thing. And I opened also when I rehearsed then later in the normal rehearsal time, there were some scenes that I said, come join me with me here because I think you can be of a help. For instance, in the uh to tonight, when when when when we ended up with the whole with everybody coming in and then tearing the uh Maria and Tony apart from each other, uh that was really a collaboration between Anna Teresa and me, a true collaboration.

There was no division anymore between dance and between theater, and that's also what I wanted, and also what she wanted, because if she just would have wanted to celebrate her dance, well, she can do that uh at in her own company and uh and at uh Opera de Paris, uh the Ballet de Paris or whatever, you know, she can do that everywhere in the world. No, she was interested in getting out of her comfort zone, as I was interested in getting out of my comfort zone. So we went on really well, and we worked for a long time. As you said, uh, we started the end of September and we opened uh the end of uh February, you know. So uh we went through heaven and hell, but we never lost each other. We never lost each other, and uh she always came back the day after, and me too, you know, like let's start another day, you know, let's make the best of it.

And that I must say I admire her a lot for that. She is a tough lady, she's a tough lady in a good sense and artistically driven. She doesn't give in, she doesn't give in uh to to make the best of the best. And when somebody uh somebody brings something to the table that's better than what she has uh invented, she is open to it, as I am, as I try to be, let me be um more. We got a sense of that. We were at the Guggenheim talk that you did with some of the cast members, and we got a sense uh it was interesting watching Anna Teresa talk about her movement and the language that she developed, but then to see it played out with the dancers, but to watch her watch them was really sort of extraordinary for me personally.

[57:30] Ivo van Hove: Well, to close this out here, thank you for being so generous with your time, Red, that you've said before that the 2016 election of Donald Trump was part of the inspiration for doing this show in the first place. Um, when theater comes back in New York, uh, which it will um in 2021, um, with Donald Trump out of the White House. How do you think this West Side Story will be different, if at all? And will you make any changes? Well, I think when the when people will see uh G Officer Kropke, you know, which uh, you know, that it that they will recognize a lot of the police violence, the racism uh against uh uh you know certain groups in society. Uh so they will recognize a lot while at that moment, you know, and of course there was already police violence, but people tend to forget very quickly, yeah.

And and a lot of people were also attacking me on my take on uh G uh Officer Kropke because it was intended originally to be comic relief. And I said, what's comic about police treating young people in a racist way? You know, what's comic about it? I cannot see it, and I cannot accept that today we should do it like that. And it took me some also there. I had really to uh stick to my conviction uh and not to give in. And I think now everybody, when when you see G Officer Krupke, you know, that's like uh yeah, you recognize what has happened on the streets. So and I think I don't think this I this problem or this item or this issue will go away that quickly, you know, because it's deep into like every every country has its traumas, you know.

But this is of course one of the traumas of American society. And a trauma is something to deal with, and that will not be solved within a few weeks or uh also not with the new president, you know, hopefully the divisiveness can go away. Uh and and the the huge tension in the country that people shouting at each other, you know, can go away, uh, but it it will take some time to heal, I think. And I think West Side Story is uh talking about these issues about racism, integration, immigration, poverty, poverty, people that are poor, you know, and how difficult they have to survive. It's it's amazing that these four guys in the in the in the 50s of the last century so long ago could have written this down in a very and and understand this word as a positive word in a very primitive way.

But this this way it talks really to the core of everything. They it's it in every scene there is a societal issue, you know. But they they it can it you you hear it, and as a director, I really challenge was to make it that you can feel it, you know, that you can really relate to it. What is poverty? Why do they fight? Why are they so angry? Why are they frustrated? Why, why, why, why, why? I you know, I that I wanted to give some kind of answers to it in the production. So I think people will see the world that they live in.

[1:00:53] Ivo van Hove: Organize crime in America. Why waste my time in America? You forget I'm in America. And at the same time, you know, because a musical is also people come there to have a good time. But you can have a good time with looking at things that are terrible. I believe in the ritual character of theater and of musical and of opera, you know, that you come there to to to everything what you're frustrated about, what you're longing, your biggest desires, that you that you come to live them uh uh in a theater. You know, it's better to come to see uh uh killings on stage like in in West Side Story than do it yourself on the street. And you know, I think it's part of a cleansing uh moment, you know, uh a communal cleansing, actually.

From being recognized for instance, the the Officer Kropke's song and the way that we did it, which was fairly aggressive, every night, you know, got a America got the biggest applause, but that's normal. But Officer Kropke was the second one every night, you know, because they recognize something, even their audiences at the end of February, they recognize something. They knew this was true what we did.

[1:02:11] Jamie DuMont: Well, you you wrote something that I that has really uh stayed with me, which is uh sort of what you just said, which is we go to our theaters to experience something that we either fear or covet in our daily lives, and I think there's so much of that in in West Side Story.

[1:02:51] Rob Russo: Well, it's fascinating to think about how um you know, Ivo's way in to West Side Story was the 1961 film, and I think that's true for a lot of people. I mean, it's certainly true for me. Um, and it's uh, you know, another part of the West Side Story story uh that um is so fascinating, which is that you know, the show was not instantly well received on Broadway, and it didn't really become you know the West Side Story, all capital letters, you know, uh that we know it is, um, until the 1961 film, which was a sensation, huge absolute sensation.

[1:03:30] Ivo van Hove: Yeah, yeah.

[1:03:31] Rob Russo: And it's most people's way in, right? I mean, let's be honest. That's that's uh most people have a relationship to the film, one way or the other.

[1:03:38] Ivo van Hove: Yeah, well, it's funny, you know, they had a sort of a tricky time selling the rights in the first place. You know, no one really wanted to make a movie out of uh out of West Side Story. You know, people weren't, you know, the studios weren't leaping and and trying to outbid each other. And in fact, the deal was not very favorable to the the creators. They didn't get a lot of money out of that movie because they sort of sold the rights for the best offer they could get, which was not a lot. And the only thing that motivated uh the studios to be interested was the surprise success of the cast album, the Broadway cast album, which you know took a while to record, and again, the you know, Columbia wasn't breaking down the door to record it because you know it was thought that this is sort of a uh an avant-garde weird, sort of unique score.

Who really wants to listen to this? Um, but it turned out, you know, that that that album became successful in its own right, and then led to you know, the studios wanted to make a film, which, like I said, you know, critical and commercial success, rave reviews, the highest grossing film of 1961. Um nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 10, including Best Picture. You know, West Side Story sort of got the last laugh in the end, and that film captured Jerome Robbins' iconic choreography in extended scenes, right? You know, the the prologue is like triple the length that it is in the Broadway show, sort of immortalized it all so that we could then have that association with it that led to its popularity back on stage, right? That called for those subsequent revivals and um really put it into the bloodstream of American culture.

[1:05:14] Ivo van Hove: Oh, totally. What I find so fascinating, and we said this a little earlier, is that the creators didn't, you know, they all have qualms with their work on the show, but they all hate the film, which I find so fascinating because it's such a beloved uh and you know, you can pick apart a lot of it, and you know, you can you can pick on the casting and the you know the the overall tone and style of the film if you want to, or you can go with it and enjoy it for what it is. Um, you know, but uh I I always find that so interesting that they're they've they're they're they're so negative on it, and yet it's this beloved it. I mean, imagine if Rogers and Hammerstein hated Sound of Music, the film, right?

Like it's that similar kind of like what there's not a lot to say about the film. I mean, I think everybody everyone knows it. But I personally, because I'm such a huge fan of this artist, I cannot talk about the film of West Side Story without talking about that marvelous opening and the Saul Bass titles because they are I to me there are they are that is as important a part of the film as anything else. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go on YouTube and watch the first four minutes of the film and you'll know what I mean.

[1:06:29] Rob Russo: Yeah, well, you know, Ivo talked about how transitions are so important um when staging the show, and one of the most remarkable things about that film are the transitions, right? Or the way that that that the scenes blend or you go from point A to point B. Even the oral experience in the beginning of hearing that right? The whistles. And those shots over Manhattan. Right. And then the street noise. And then it builds through a crescendo uh a crescendo, and then you have the orchestral, right? I mean, that in and of itself, as a filmmaking technique, you know, was something that was innovative and so thrilling, and it instantly immerses you into that world.

[1:07:37] Ivo van Hove: I love that film.

[1:07:38] Rob Russo: Wow.

[1:07:38] Ivo van Hove: Oh, I love the film. My favorite of those transitions is when Maria gets the white dress on and she starts spinning around and it blurs and it spins into the dance at the gym. To me, that's as thrilling as when you see a traditional version of the show and that moment happens and she starts spinning and all of a sudden the streamers fall down from the from the flies. And that's thrilling in its own in its own right.

[1:08:16] Ivo van Hove: Something else I I have to just throw out there because it's a it's a thing that happens a lot in the in the world these days, and that is going to see the film of West Side Story with the music played live by whatever Philharmonic is doing.

[1:08:32] Rob Russo: And I've seen it in New York, I've seen it in San Francisco. It's really it's interesting when you do that experience, it becomes obviously more about the music and less about the film, uh, which is an interesting sort of experience, but um, but it's it's it's worth it nonetheless.

[1:08:48] Jamie DuMont: Oh, I bet, I bet. Well, we'd be remiss not to mention that there is um another film of West Side Story uh coming out.

[1:08:56] Rob Russo: It was supposed to come out this month.

[1:08:57] Jamie DuMont: Yes, uh we'd be going in about a week or two.

[1:09:01] Rob Russo: Exactly, but it will now be released on December 10th, 2021, fingers crossed knock on wood, uh, which actually is kind of better because it coincides with the 60th anniversary of the original film.

[1:09:10] Jamie DuMont: And I love those anniversary alignments. I love when you can make that happen. Um it it it it pissed me off to no end that the that the revival of uh a chorus line happened in 2006 instead of 2005, you know, because it was just one year off from having a clean anniversary, you know.

[1:09:28] Rob Russo: But this uh, you know, the it's a Steven Spielberg film with a screenplay by Tony Kushner. They've been very careful to to point out that it's not a remake of the 1961 film, but rather another adaptation, a new adaptation of the 1957 stage musical, um, which I'm really excited to see.

[1:09:45] Jamie DuMont: You know, it sort of reminds me of Annie, you know, the 1982 film of Annie, it just completely eviscerates the stage version. But the the 1999 uh uh film is very true to the stage version, or you're rather it's a more faithful adaptation, right? So it's it's fun to to see, you know how how different artists can can adapt the same source material into a film.

[1:10:07] Rob Russo: You know my feelings on the 82 film of Annie.

[1:10:10] Jamie DuMont: I know all of your feelings, so we will note them and move on.

[1:10:13] Rob Russo: Uh yes.

[1:10:14] Jamie DuMont: That's why I'm excited, you know, to see this film, especially on the heels of the the Evo revival on Broadway. You know, it's again, it'll just be fun to see different artists have their take on the same source material, which you know just goes to prove how it endures.

[1:10:30] Rob Russo: Um I agree with you, and I think you know, normally I'm I'm of the mind, although the Annie is a great example, right? Because I love the I love the 97 tip television version, but normally I'm of the mind of like when you do something like why would you remake the the film of Sound of Music? Why would you remake Jaws? Why would you, you know, there's a million things you could say in that in that way.

[1:10:52] Jamie DuMont: And part of me feels that way about West Side Story, but really how I feel is no, remake it. It's it's it it should be redone, it should be reinterpreted. It can it can live in another person's um uh view or in another director's vision of the film.

[1:11:11] Rob Russo: And of course, of course, Steven Spielberg is probably the last person you would pick to make a musical, and in some ways he's probably the most perfect, right? It's gonna be really interesting to see what he does with the film.

[1:11:23] Jamie DuMont: And I mean, he's a brilliant filmmaker, there's no question about that. So I I'm actually looking forward to it, which I'm surprised that I'm saying.

[1:11:30] Rob Russo: Yeah, yeah.

[1:11:31] Jamie DuMont: Well, and I think, you know, just one more to put a real a real fine point on it. Um, you know, as great as the 1961 film is, um, you know, a lot of those actors are in brown face. And that is so offensive and and unacceptable.

[1:11:46] Rob Russo: Um, certainly at the time it was, but you know, it was the it was what happened, right? But through today's lens, it's it's almost painful to watch, right?

[1:11:53] Jamie DuMont: So one of the great opportunities that this film will take advantage of is the is the opportunity as Arthur Lawrence tried to do in the 2009 Broadway revival, and that is to introduce a note of authenticity and realism and and better and broader ethnic representation among the characters.

[1:12:13] Rob Russo: Um, and that in and of itself to me is reason enough to to make a new film.

[1:12:18] Jamie DuMont: Um, setting aside also that, you know, Steven Spielberg is an incredible artist, and Tony Kushner is probably the greatest, you know, writer you could imagine. And to have him uh be handling the script is exciting.

[1:12:31] Rob Russo: I'm sure they're gonna do some great stuff uh with it.

[1:12:34] Jamie DuMont: And you know, to to pivot, I guess a bit to to our next conversation, you know, there's been uh a lot talked about in terms of the casting of that film with Ariana DeBose um playing Anita, which I'm so excited to see her on on screen. I've seen her on stage, and she's an incredible performer.

[1:12:52] Rob Russo: But it got me to thinking, and I know you agree, that so often um since that 1957 production, we talk so much about the Anitas. Ariana's gonna be playing Anita, you know, Rita Moreno very famously played Anita in the film and won an Academy Award, which was groundbreaking and you know, so thrilling.

[1:13:09] Jamie DuMont: Chita Rivera, post-1957 has gone on to become, you know, one of the greatest Broadway stars in history, and you know, uh is certainly someone that we you know talk about and celebrate.

[1:13:21] Rob Russo: Miss Debbie Allen.

[1:13:22] Jamie DuMont: Debbie Allen, you know, the Anita was the star of the 1980 revival.

[1:13:27] Rob Russo: Um Karen Olivo in 1909, she was the one who won the Tony Award. She was the one that everyone was talking about.

[1:13:31] Jamie DuMont: She played Anita. And Anita, Anita, Anita, I feel like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, you know, Anita has become the character that everybody talks about and everybody's excited about. What what about Maria?

[1:13:33] Rob Russo: You know?

[1:13:42] Jamie DuMont: What about Maria?

[1:13:46] Rob Russo: Uh, so how do you solve a problem like Maria?

[1:13:50] Jamie DuMont: Well, you solve a problem like Maria by having Carol Lawrence and Shereen Pimentel on to talk about. I know we talked about uh Maria with Ivo a bit, you know, which was intentional on our part, but we wanted to put together um, you know, these two incredible performers across uh 63 years uh from their performances to talk more about the character because you know, as we'll get into, she really is the heart of the story.

[1:14:15] Rob Russo: And obviously, as you just said, she the she's often overlooked. And what was not surprising to either one of us was how quickly Carol Lawrence and Shereen Pimentel jumped at the chance to talk together about the part.

[1:14:29] Jamie DuMont: And I think that's I think that's very telling of how they certainly feel about the character of Maria, obviously, both having played her, but also just the the ability to talk about their process and dig a little bit deeper into how each of them came to the part.

[1:14:45] Rob Russo: I think um was a great opportunity. And I'm I'm I'm so excited, and they're both such marvelous ladies.

[1:14:51] Jamie DuMont: For those who don't know who Carol Lawrence is, which they should be, you know, struck by lightning. But if if you don't know who Carol Lawrence is, Jamie, could you share a little bit about her incredible uh biography?

[1:15:02] Rob Russo: Broadway legend, Carol Lawrence is a veteran of 14 shows. Obviously, she's best known for creating the role of Maria in 1957, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Later, her credits included the classic flops, Subways Are for Sleeping, the hit musical I Do, I Do, and On the Road, she famously played Fanny Bryce in the first national tour of Funny Girl, and starred in Sugar Babies and Kiss of the Spider Woman, both on Broadway and on the tour.

[1:15:28] Jamie DuMont: And of course, she has a celebrated career on television with turns on Rawhide, Murder She Wrote, and General Hospital.

[1:15:35] Rob Russo: Shereen Pimentel, the most recent Maria, made her Broadway debut at the age of nine as a young Nala in Lion King.

[1:15:44] Jamie DuMont: I love that.

[1:15:44] Rob Russo: I, you know, I I had forgotten that um before we spoke to her. Um, you know, that she wasn't just fresh out of Juilliard. She'd been on Broadway before at nine.

[1:15:55] Jamie DuMont: Um as an Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage at the age of 21. She returned to Broadway to star in West Side Story after finishing her senior year at Juilliard.

[1:16:07] Rob Russo: So these ladies are magnificent, and uh I think we should uh we should dig into it with them.

[1:16:31] Jamie DuMont: Carol, let's start with you. Uh, you created the role of Maria on Broadway in 1957. Take us back to that time. What can you what can you tell us about the casting and the rehearsal process?

[1:16:43] Carol Lawrence: Well, it was a very exciting time. It had been going on for a long time, perhaps two and a half years in in casting for me. I did 13 auditions for the show, and everybody in the world wanted to be in West Side Story once they heard any of the music. We met for the first time as a cast in the theater with Stephen, and he was playing the piano a lot of the time. He was our accompanist, and so we were fed by geniuses, and and every side. And it it was a very thrilling, thrilling time.

[1:17:18] Carol Lawrence: So just to have Leonard Bernstein in the room was uh ecstatically exciting to say the least. His cape was alone of an ex an experience. And he was always in a cake. The whole idea of doing Shakespeare and and studying it in modern times and doing a tragedy and calling it a musical comedy. We broke every possible rule that was to be done. And stood by until opening night when the audience agreed with us that it was the right choice.

[1:17:52] Jamie DuMont: So Shireen, 63 years later, you are Broadway's latest Maria.

[1:17:57] Shereen Pimentel: Yeah.

[1:17:58] Jamie DuMont: How does it feel to be stepping into the shoes of this iconic role? And and what was your introduction to West Side Story?

[1:18:05] Shereen Pimentel: Yeah, um it's definitely like daunting. They're like huge shoes to fill. Um, they're amazing women who played Maria before. And my first introduction was the 2009 revival. I had just gotten into musical theater. I made my Broadway debut in um The Lion King around that time. And I was finally like going to see theater before I was only going to see the ballet, and we switched that over, and I was like, I want to see West Side Story.

[1:18:34] Shereen Pimentel: Like, um, you know, you you've heard so much about it, and now there's like some kind of iteration of it on Broadway. And I loved it. And I knew I wanted to play Maria. I loved Anita and I thought she was like such like Spitfire amazing. And I was like, but I think I I think I fit for Maria.

[1:18:55] Shereen Pimentel: Um, and you know, saw the film and and then just kind of knew about it, but it wasn't something that was like happening on, you know, in in like a mainstream way. It was happening at regional theaters, and so you would try to catch it if you could get an audition, like to be able to play the role. And then the movie was coming out, and that also flew me by. I was in the middle of school, and I was like, there's no way I can do like all of this stuff.

[1:19:21] Shereen Pimentel: And they have the cast and it's like a stellar cast. I can't wait for it to come out. And then this audition kind of popped up for the Broadway show. And I like booked it in a month when I did not think I was gonna be playing the role at all.

[1:19:36] Shereen Pimentel: Um, and yeah, it was exciting, but like also kind of scary because you know everyone knows the legacy of West Side Story, you know, and and each person that takes on the role takes on the the entire past of it. You you kind of take that on and then try to show what you are deciding to bring to it.

[1:19:58] Jamie DuMont: Well, Shereen, you bring up an interesting point because the show, I mean, the show is you know groundbreaking, as you mentioned, Carol, and it's it lives in people's hearts for sure. But I think it also, and Carol, you can speak to this in 1957 when you premiered, it was a little polarizing, right? Audiences loved it and some didn't.

[1:20:20] Rob Russo: And and then similarly with the 2020 revival, there were the the audiences had a mixed reaction. Most people loved it, but some people had you know the memories of what they thought the show was.

[1:20:31] Jamie DuMont: So I'm wondering if you both can talk a little bit about what that's like to be in a show that people is so beloved, but also has a little bit of controversy to it. Carol, particularly when you did it, nobody had done a show like West Side Story before.

[1:20:46] Carol Lawrence: So audiences had never seen anything like that. We found that young people came to it automatically. It was a natural reaction. They didn't have any of the precedents, and uh, oh, it can't be done like that. None of that existed. They were wide open to accept whatever we brought to it.

[1:21:08] Carol Lawrence: And there was more violence, there was more operatic, there was more dancing than it had ever been done in a Broadway show. And so we were breaking ground and setting new rules that people had to sing and dance and act. It wasn't, and it was realistic. It wasn't high drama. It wasn't Shakespeare in the way that people, especially the English, protected their language so tremendously.

[1:21:40] Carol Lawrence: It was a very different taste of the story. And so I think it was more exciting in its new form. And even the one that I saw most recently was just seen. It was was totally different taste.

[1:21:56] Ivo van Hove: It was a different experience. And I think that's exciting. I think that you can take a classic and a legend and a love story as profound as Romeo and Juliet and dress it in new clothes. And everybody sees it in a new aura. And it was thrilling to be a part of it. And Shereen, that must have been your experience because your production was redressed in brand new clothes, so to speak.

[1:22:23] Shereen Pimentel: Literally, literally. Yeah, that's actually kind of exactly um just like a few years later. That's that's exactly what happened. Young people really, really took to it, and um, because it's something that has never been seen before and is and is done in a completely different way. Um and that's what I love. I think that's what I love about just doing stuff in general because it's exciting. Like uh we don't have to agree on on like uh and and as Carol said before, like it's taste, like it's people's tastes and it's what they um come to and and enjoy at the end of the day, but we don't have to agree that we all have the same taste. That's okay. Like we can show up and and watch this show, and the person next to you could absolutely hate it, and you thought it was a masterpiece, and that's totally all right.

Um, but at the end of the day, what I love is that you can walk out and feel so extremely it doesn't matter which way you felt, um, but it made you like talk about it. You didn't walk out and say, Oh, that was fine, and you went to bed and you didn't think about it and you moved on. Instead, like you wake up the next day and you're like, I just want to talk about this one thing. So even if you hate it or love it, you have an opinion about it and you want to like actively have this conversation, that makes it exciting to do. So I don't, you know, I I'm like love it, hate it. I don't know and don't care. Like I I just want to know what it made you feel, because it made you viscerally feel. And at the end of the day, that's why we like make art.

We love these masterpieces because they change the landscape of art. And I think that West Side just at its core in in its writing can do that. And and then you just dress it up in new clothes for each generation that gets to see it and gets to kind of like take it on. That's it's fun.

[1:24:13] Ivo van Hove: Well, continuing with the uh with the metaphor, stepping into the shoes of Maria, um, West Side Story, you know, has a famously sparse book by Arthur Lawrence. Um so so the lyrics, you know, become all the more important. I mean, they're always important in a musical, but they're really important because they make up part of you know what Maria has to say, and there's not a lot spoken in the show. So I'm wondering what what did Sondheim's lyrics teach you about the character Maria?

[1:24:42] Carol Lawrence: Every word is an important contribution to the scene, and very often it's sung, it isn't even spoken. So Stephen's contribution was enormous, and he brought such humor to things like Krupke and uh and cool and all of those wonderfully sarcastic lyrics that he wrote, and and yet there was great um profound love in I Have a Love, which was Lenny's favorite movie in the entire show, was the essence that no matter what went wrong, she would love him and go with him and do whatever had to be done as long as it was possible. And that kind of loyalty is golden in in every world more today than ever. So he was way ahead of his time.

[1:26:13] Shereen Pimentel: Yeah. I feel like you were great. You know, I feel like it just like transfers over. Um we we really made sure within the music that you were true to the punctuation. I feel like um it's the kind of music that you actually have to pay it. I think you do it in all music, but especially in West Side, you pay attention to the actual ebbs and flows, which is what you pay attention to in Shakespeare specifically. Um, if there's a comma, if there's a period, you have to be true to every single part of that. And and even within the music of West Side Story, you had to be true to that. And so we spent a lot of time making sure that that was as accurate as possible. Um, and like, why were you breathing?

Like what like what was the impetus to to do each part? Um, and I felt like that made it even more um it highlighted the words even more. It's a beautiful score, you know, and and that's something that everyone knows, but it's so easy to just sing I Have a Love and it's all that I have. It it's a you know, we've heard it a bunch of times, and but the original that girl did, you know, it's like it is infused with so much love, and so you try to figure out how to infuse it in that manner, and and you have to go back to the text that's written with that song. So, yeah, you you you try to just be as true as possible, and it's written on the page. Like there's you don't have to do anything.

[1:27:42] Carol Lawrence: I was reading that Sondheim had a similar a similar thought, which is that Lenny's music was so expressive that his words you know just sort of flowed naturally because uh they they matched the the the tenor of the music you know the all the emotion was already there and he just had to put it into words to you know to make it that sound that simple of course it wasn't that simple a lot of craft and and talent went into it. Well thinking about the big twist I guess you could say in West Side Story which isn't a twist to a modern audience but certainly in 1957 I'm sure it was a twist I'm wondering Carol when you auditioned for the role of Maria in a musical version of Romeo and Juliet did you know that she would live at the end of the show or was that a surprise to you too?

[1:28:29] Carol Lawrence: It was a big surprise yes and Arthur felt that it would be a greater tragedy if she did live that she would have to face the tragedy alone and I always played her pregnant so oh interesting. The last scene was was quite um different in that sense that it wasn't the end it really wasn't and it was almost like a beginning. Yes and she is the one who matures none of the other people the other people hang on to all the hates and the resentments and the bigotry and and the ferocious violence. Maria is the one who reaches out and says can we stop it? Can you help me stop it? Can you help me pick him up? Can you give me the gun? Can you show me how to live on? How to not let this be the final episode and and that is more thrilling to me than if she died. I think it's uh it's a it's a bigger challenge to society is if Maria has to face the truth of the world and alone. She's the ultimate survivor.

[1:29:46] Shereen Pimentel: Yes, she is. And and it makes what you say makes me wonder if what the tragedy that Maria goes through, if that would help her try to change the world to be a better place as a as a survivor of such a horrific thing and so much tragedy, does she go on to try to make the world a better place for everyone?

[1:30:07] Carol Lawrence: We can hope that.

[1:30:09] Shereen Pimentel: Yes.

[1:30:11] Carol Lawrence: That's the invitation that she gives is how do we do this? Help me, help me. And you just said the word hope, you know, and it's interesting because at the same time that her surviving does make it more tragic, it also introduces that note of hope. So it it in some way it it it does both things, uh, which is quite powerful. I think that's what Arthur wanted, and uh and Jerry too. Jerry always said that what existed in the world and what he was telling the story was that this is not tolerable, and we must change it. So join me. Do not stop here. Keep going, take the torch and run as fast as you can.

[1:30:55] Carol Lawrence: Well, speaking of that, that very powerful speech at the end of the musical. I had read that that Arthur Lawrence had uh originally written it thinking that Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim would turn it into a song and she would sing the closing of the show, and yet uh but but that didn't come to pass. And but what he wrote, the sketch of the song is still to this day that speech and is as strong I think as as the aria would have been I think it's even stronger that that she stands up and becomes an adult and dem almost demand well does demand show me how many bullets are there because we all killed him it see it's so much more powerful than somebody just singing for me it it was and uh I loved it. Carol did you know at the time that there was thought that that that moment might be a song or was it always presented to you as as the speech?

[1:31:44] Carol Lawrence: It was always a speech it was never uh even attempted when I never heard a melody for it I it was always enough uh and and we did it um the first time for an invited audience and that's when they decided that it was powerful enough to stand alone.

[1:31:44] Ivo van Hove: What was the reaction of the invited audience that first night?

[1:31:44] Carol Lawrence: Oh they screamed and yelled and and bravoed and did went went crazy yeah Lena Horn was one of those in the audience to look out and see that beautiful face or something else and Latin Henderson and all all the stars that were on Broadway at the time.

[1:32:37] Rob Russo: Oh well Shereen Rob and I were at the first preview of of of your your production and it was a similar feeling in the house that night the the people went absolutely bananas. So it it does it it it packs a powerful punch.

[1:32:50] Shereen Pimentel: It does. It it definitely definitely does. Thinking back to like the first preview from like where we where we shut down, it's like a it's a huge jump and leap and like so much changes over time. Uh but I I agree with that that final speech. I always saw it as even though we end it the way we end it um at the front of the stage I always saw it that Maria finished it and walked off and had like she was the head of this and like the gangs would fall in line next to each other and would walk off behind her. Uh and that's the image that I tried to keep for the audition because I I liked this feeling that there was this one woman who stood at the head of all these people to try and and create peace within it because she's a woman.

For for me that was the hope because I feel like at the end she gets so much strength that she can like she I think she's always had it within her but she finally sees that like power that she has to be able to do that. So yeah I I agree that that final speech is super powerful and to do that for that first preview is like um exciting and and and you finish it just like completely drained but um hopeful at the end.

[1:34:29] Carol Lawrence: Well you just mentioned you know that that part of the symbolism of that speech is is a woman's power and a woman's voice. And you know, there's some critique of West Side Story that perhaps the female characters don't get as much time on stage or as much representation or opportunity to voice how they they think and feel.

[1:34:48] Shereen Pimentel: Yeah.

[1:34:48] Carol Lawrence: Uh, I'm wondering how how both of you feel about that critique and how you would respond to it.

[1:34:53] Carol Lawrence: I felt that what they did was so powerful that it it I never felt deprived of uh voice or fulfillment in the part. It was a joy to come to the theater every night and just get on that train because it was gonna barrel to the end. If you did anything at all, you you were just present and it carried you. The strength of the piece is so enormous and so heartfelt by everybody in the audience. They they truly do support you, and uh it's uh it's thrilling.

[1:35:33] Shereen Pimentel: That that's again the same way that I feel.

[1:35:36] Shereen Pimentel: Um, I think that there's something to be said about that train and specifically like cutting out the intermission and like real like West Side already kind of like hit you like a ton of bricks, but we really like put our foot on the gas and did not let it stop when we do it. And so I feel like what it gets to highlight, even though a lot of people feel like there's not a lot of women, what it does highlight within the women is this like strength and this need and this determination that they have to get exactly what they want and they know what they want the entire time. And for me, that's what drove it. Um, like from when that like door opens up all the way to when we turn around at the end.

I'm driving with this idea that I know exactly what I want, and I never feel iffy on any of those feelings, and that's kind of what I say to it is that I feel like that's still present. Even though, yes, a lot of this, but a lot of the story in general, I feel is about men. It is. There's a lot of guys. There's not a lot of women really in the show in general. Um, so I think though that what we were able to capture was so much of like the 21st century woman and how she is just driving her own bus, even though she's in love and she's like going through heartache and family and all this stuff, but like still has this good like push at her. And I think it's always been there. So you just keep updating it more and more as we work to like advocate for women's rights. We work to advocate for that in all theater, I think. And so we try to update it in every single character that we can and every single story you can.

[1:37:24] Shereen Pimentel: To address, I guess what might be called the elephant in the room. Maria's song uh in Act Two originally and now uh you know not present in the current production with Mr. Sondheim's blessing. You know, over the years, he has been uh critical of that song in particular, his work in the show, but that song in particular, you know, believing that perhaps the lyrics he wrote were a little too sophisticated or articulate for Maria. And you know, he says he's been blushing ever since every time he hears it. Uh Leonard Bernstein was a little bit more blunt. He said that Sondheim hated the song. Um, but I'm wondering, you know, for both of you, what do you think about "I Feel Pretty" and its words? And do you think Sondheim is maybe underestimating Maria? Uh or do you agree with his self-critique? Carol, I'll let you go first.

[1:38:11] Carol Lawrence: I think it's a tremendous loss for Maria, not to be presented as happy and in love, feeling pretty, not looking pretty, not saying I'm pretty, but acknowledging the change in her psychologically, spiritually, physically, in every possible way. And I just think it was great humor on her part to make all those rhymes. And I think she's a clever young girl. I don't think she's um, you know, inhibited. I don't think I think that she is totally engaged in a brand new feeling, and acknowledging that this is joyful. And on top of that, immediately it's taken away from her. So the tragedy is greater once you see that she's capable of that much joy, and then having been robbed by it. See the pretty good in that mood in that near aware to be such a pretty face, such a pretty face, such a pretty smile, such a pretty mood.

[1:39:22] Carol Lawrence: I feel studying, I feel studying and transit, like running, like running and love. I am pretty.

[1:39:52] Carol Lawrence: I was telling Shereen before we started, I brought some props today. Our audience won't be able to see, but here is a playbill from 1958. Oh and there you are on the cover, Carol, our cover girl. Um and you could see the joy uh you know on your face in this photo shoot, which obviously you know captures the spirit of the character.

[1:40:11] Carol Lawrence: Exactly. We ran for days, we ran through every possible heat wave. Larry had heat prostration and collapsed in one of the shoots. Yes. But um it's a wonderful trademark for the show and shows us free, free and full of love against all the advice of everybody around us. The tradition continues because of course Shereen is on the cover of the latest playbill as well. So they've picked up on that. I'm wondering, Shereen, you know, without having "I Feel Pretty" for you as the performer to express joy. Have you thought more about how else you can express her or show her without that song throughout the rest of your performance?

[1:41:02] Shereen Pimentel: There were a lot of things that I wanted to really hone in on for Maria. I wanted to hone in on the awkward feeling of falling in love at a very young age, um, because it's weird. It's a weird thing, you know, you're 16 and you absolutely fall in love, and that's it. There's nothing that anyone else can tell you, but you don't, it's not right, it's not wrong, it's just weird, and it feels weird, and I loved that. I loved that like spontaneity of being able to have that come through. And I felt like there was a joy within like this awkward feeling. I think though that I also really wanted to root her in a strength of many women. Being a Puerto Rican woman, I wanted to seat Maria in a place. I say that because I think as a young woman, when I was 16 and when I was growing up, I had a lot of like a strong spine and a determination behind me that I think that many people will like push off for a young person that I really wanted to encapsulate within her because I've always seen her as this like strong, strong woman who you get to see the strength at the end, but I like to see it when it like bust out at the end, but it was always just like right under the surface, ready to like hit anybody when it needed to, and it was being suffocated down by this like society telling her to quiet that to be easy to make things easier and be young and be simple.

And I don't think she ever was. I really wanted to encapsulate that, and I don't think that that has to lack any joy because I think there is joy that comes from strength. Like we I think in like life, we all talk about self-love and being strong and confident as people. There is a joy that comes from being that and from sitting into your own. And I don't think she fully uh she obviously doesn't come into her own, and she would come into her own farther after the show, but until the end. But I think that there is an ability for her to have this gravitas. Um, and so I love having that and infusing that with joy. Um because she's not one thing. I loved, I loved being able to mess with that. So many people are like, oh, I see this and I see that.

And I was like, yes, see it all. I'm great. I love for you to see all the feelings that she's feeling. Cause it is. I feel like that's also the awkward part. It's like it's awkward because you feel all this stuff. You're like clammy, but you're excited and you're nervous and you're scared and like, but extremely joyful. And so, yeah, I try to just infuse that throughout her entire arc of life because it's a quick up and down. It is so fast that she drops in from all of those emotions um throughout the entire show.

[1:44:15] Rob Russo: Well, it's wonderful to hear both of you talk about Maria because I think that's what makes her such a fascinating character is that both of you have infused her with love and complexities to make her a believable, but also, you know, a very relatable character. Before we wrap up, I'm just wondering if um if Shereen or Carol, you have anything you want to ask each other about performing in this incredible piece of theater.

[1:44:44] Carol Lawrence: Wow. It's just it's an endless, it's like a lollipop that has no end. You just never stop wanting to taste another faction of it, another side of this character. I never got tired of playing her, and I can't imagine people say, Oh, but it was so long, and you had to say the same words over and over. Well, nothing is the same in theater. Number one, you're different every day. The people you're playing with are different. The audience is always different. And so I just had an ecstatic, joyful time every minute. And I'm almost positive that's what you feel as well, Shereen.

[1:45:29] Shereen Pimentel: Yeah, no, I have to echo that. It's exciting and it's kind of crazy. Uh, because as you said, you have a different audience every night, and each person, it's not even just like each audience, it's each individual person that walks into that theater has such a different experience and walks away with something different. They see you different, your relationship with Tony different, the whole show differently. It's just and that made it so electrifying. So, as you said, people ask you, like, don't you get tired of doing the same thing over and over again? It's like, no, it's uh, it's it, yeah, it just infuses you with like so much energy.

[1:46:14] Rob Russo: One thing is clear at its core, West Side Story is a love story. So we'll close with Carol Lawrence's reflection on the love that lies at the heart of the story.

[1:46:23] Carol Lawrence: The balcony scene uh will always be a gem of culminating. Uh the first time they say I love you, the first time they hold each other, the first time they kiss, and uh to say that the world was just a planet, a place for me to live in, and now it's a star, and we are together forever. That um to me is West Side Story.

[1:46:52] Carol Lawrence: Good night, tonight. There's only you tonight. What you'd like to be code open.

[1:47:15] Carol Lawrence: I know not I was wrong for he. And what was just a word is a story.

[1:47:39] Rob Russo: Rob here, that's our show. Thanks for listening. As we continue to bask in the glow of the Biden Harris victory, we're still big fans of Social Goods, an online store that offers a curated slate of statement-making merchandise that gives back to nonprofits tackling today's most pressing issues. From Everytown for Gun Safety to Planned Parenthood of New York, the Special Olympics, and more. Listeners of The Fabulous Invalid can go to social-goods.com and use the code FAB15 at checkout to receive 15% off your first purchase. That's Social Goods where every transaction comes with real action. The Fabulous Invalid is a production of ONM etc. the Fabulous Invalid LLC, and a proud member of the Broadway Podcast Network.com and on social media at Fabulous Invalid, and on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever you find your podcasts. Check out our archive of episodes and be sure to tune in next time. Good night. Sleep well, and when you dream of me.