West Side Story

OK, I missed one. Since we're doing this whole Broadway review thing now... I saw the new West Side Story back in March. When the Family was in town, we had tickets to see Stomp, but the venue was bought out for the night for a corporate function. SO, our ticket broker got us 7th row center orchestra seats for the brand new West Side Story. Awesome.

It was quite good. The dancing was impressive, just really remarkable. They also did a rewrite of the script and left most of the Puerto Rican scenes in Spanish. Genius. I feel like the changes that they made took some of the cheesiness out of the story. For some reason "I Feel Pretty" doesn't sound quite as ridiculous in Spanish.

Costumes and sets were simple, but effective. Maria was played by an Argentinian opera singer who was supposed to be phenomenal. I thought she was good, but some of my friends with a more professional perspective were unimpressed. Tony was played by a guy that looked fresh out of BYU. Clean cut and fresh faced. Good voice, great dancer - but clean cut and return-missionary-ish doesn't make a very convincing Romeo.... I'm just saying.

Again with the dancing and the choreography - SO GOOD. If the rest of the show had bombed (and it didn't) this show would have been worth seeing for the dancing alone. That's how good it was.

I give it a thumbs up.