West Side Story

This blog is dedicated to my favorite haranders...and to anyone who appreciates theatre as much as i do!

I went to see West Side Story tonite with Manuel and his friend Chris. We all sat seperate though. Good thing...i'd be complaining all night to them! Here is a rundown of my thoughts of how bad this production was!

West Side is my favorite musical. It's traditional in everyway. They said it was original Jerome Robbins choreography...which it was...and all of the lyrics were the same..."womb to tomb, sperm to worm" (dana!). However...and I am not against colorblind casting...BUT a BLACK anita?!?! who, may I add, had a TERRIBLE puerto rican accent. You could barely understand her. Not to mention...she had a bad singing voice. SO bad, that during the quintet, they had to use the rest of the cast to sing with her!!!

Now Maria, she looked the role, but she was an Opera diva, with nasal issues. Mixed with Tony who was WAY too old for the role and he had a jazz voice who was also too nasal (no josh forman i tell yah!). Put them together and you lost Tony but they didn't blend well at all. Tony also spelled out everything he sang, so it looked like he was doing an interpretive dance to everything! And he cracked on the last note of Maria.

As for minor roles, Riff- Had no voice at all. Baby John-GAY!!!!!!!! and Action and Bernardo- too overdramatic. All of the actors actually couldn't act or sing. The dancing...i'll give them that. They could dance. But I don't think just because it's a dancing show you should forgo the singing and acting abilities of a performer! ARGH!

and the costumes! AHHHH!!! The jets were wearing silk orange ties with brownish silk jackets that said jets on the back for the dance. This isn't Grease! The Shark girls...all were wearing hot pink except ONE girl was wearing red and it wasn't even Anita?!?! Horrible! I was appaled!

Overall...i could have walked out during the first act, but I stayed to watch the terrible second act :) I tried to meet the cast after the show because they were all american (the show was in english), but we went to the wrong door and by the time we got to the stage door, everyone left!

In anycase...don't do west side story if you can't do it well! end of story!!!!