In Which We Watch West Side Story
Mar. 17th, 2019 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWe saw West Side Story at Berkeley Playhouse today. I'd never seen it before (aside from the brief but memorable parody in Scrubs), but I was impressed by the cleverness of the translation of Romeo & Juliet into the near-modern day and I was less impressed by the music — in part, because it's somewhat sparse for a musical, in part because there were few stand-out numbers, though "America" was great and "The Jet Song" and "I Feel Pretty" are well-known and pretty catchy. I also feel like the music hasn't caught up with the grittier urban setting of the play. Though "America" feels very modern with its argumentative intercuts, "I Feel Pretty" could have come straight out of The Sound of Music.
What really impressed me, though, was the messaging.
I mean, a play about racial animosities, where a somewhat down-trodden group hates the newest immigrants for no particular reason, that's ripped straight from the headlines. But the play goes a lot deeper than that, and is really a psychological tour de force.
To start with, I never understood how pathetic "The Jet Song" was. This was a song sung by a downtrodden underclass who is desperately trying to claim their importance. It's not about loyalty or brotherhood or the other things I assumed form the snippets I'd previously heard; it's hopeless people screaming into the void. This is confirmed by "Cool", which is all about the bubbling anxiety and fear experienced by these people; we may not understand why Trumpites are so desperately afraid of the immigrants coming into this country, but the fact is that the economic, personal, and existential anxiety is there. And then we have "Gee, Officer Krupke", about how these people suffer the tragedy of diminished expectations. Put it all together and you have a very powerful statement about the fears of those who aren't being protected as they should be by our society. That's a long way beyond Romeo & Juliet.
Oh, and I should mention the dancing. Great dancing. No surprise. And great staging. I loved the fact that the Jets were primarily dressed in blue (with some white) and the Sharks primarily in red (with some black). You couldn't get an American flag without both: more great messaging.
Edit: Ha! The kid who played gang-leader Riff in the West Side Story movie was Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks! And Tony was Ben Horne!
What really impressed me, though, was the messaging.
I mean, a play about racial animosities, where a somewhat down-trodden group hates the newest immigrants for no particular reason, that's ripped straight from the headlines. But the play goes a lot deeper than that, and is really a psychological tour de force.
To start with, I never understood how pathetic "The Jet Song" was. This was a song sung by a downtrodden underclass who is desperately trying to claim their importance. It's not about loyalty or brotherhood or the other things I assumed form the snippets I'd previously heard; it's hopeless people screaming into the void. This is confirmed by "Cool", which is all about the bubbling anxiety and fear experienced by these people; we may not understand why Trumpites are so desperately afraid of the immigrants coming into this country, but the fact is that the economic, personal, and existential anxiety is there. And then we have "Gee, Officer Krupke", about how these people suffer the tragedy of diminished expectations. Put it all together and you have a very powerful statement about the fears of those who aren't being protected as they should be by our society. That's a long way beyond Romeo & Juliet.
Oh, and I should mention the dancing. Great dancing. No surprise. And great staging. I loved the fact that the Jets were primarily dressed in blue (with some white) and the Sharks primarily in red (with some black). You couldn't get an American flag without both: more great messaging.
Edit: Ha! The kid who played gang-leader Riff in the West Side Story movie was Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks! And Tony was Ben Horne!