West Side Story

Background Information

In the mid 1950’s acclaimed director and choreographer Jerome Robbins (Peter Pan, The King and I) conceived of a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, to be set in modern day New York City. The rival families morphed into rival gangs, The Sharks and The Jets, representing the tensions between various ethnic groups on the west side of town.

Music for West Side Story was composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by then-newcomer Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim was a protégée of Oscar Hammerstein; Hammerstein wrote numerous musicals like Oklahoma! and The King and I (famously choreographed by Jerome Robbins) with his lyricist partner Richard Rogers. Stephen Sondheim went on to write both lyrics and music for such modern Broadway classics as Sweeney Todd, Assassins, and Into The Woods. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for his musical Sunday in the Park with George, which was inspired by the famous oil painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by pointillist George Seurat. The book for West Side Story was written by Arthur Laurents, who later collaborated with Sondheim on Gypsy and Anyone Can Whistle. Laurents was also responsible for the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, and wrote numerous plays as well.

West Side Story debuted at the Winter Garden Theater (later home of the long-running Cats) in 1957. It won Jerome Robbins his second Tony Award for Best Choreographer (the first was for High Button Shoes in 1947). West Side Story played for more than 700 performances before going on tour and traveling to London. In 1961, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still) directed a film version of the musical, starring Natalie Wood as Maria. It garnered an impressive ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Over the last fifty years, West Side Story has remained a popular musical, often performed in high schools and community theaters around the country. It was revived on Broadway in 1980, for over 300 performances.

• West Side Story marked 25-year-old Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway debut
• Composer Leonard Bernstein was appointed Music Director of the New York Philharmonic within a year of the show’s debut
• Nominated for Best Musical in 1957, West Side Story lost the Tony Award to The Music Man
• Elvis Presley was offered the role of Tony in the film version, but turned it down.
• The 1959 Broadway hit Gypsy was a collaboration by almost the same creative team as West Side Story; Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents all reprised their artistic roles, though Jule Styne wrote the music instead of Bernstein