Something's Coming.(Theater review)

Byline: writes Adam Green. editor: Valerie Steiker

Broadway celebrates the return of two classic New York musicalsWest Side Story and Guys and Dolls

When West Side Story opened on Broadway, in 1957, it was hailed as revolutionary for its seamless construction, its gritty subject matter, and its bummer of an ending. Half a century, one Academy Awardwinning Hollywood adaptation, two New York revivals, and several thousand high school productions later, this updated Romeo and Juliet, set amid ethnic gang violence in the streets of New York, remains a classic thanks to Leonard Bernstein's incandescent music, Stephen Sondheim's nimble lyrics, Arthur Laurents's tough, spare book, and Jerome Robbins's propulsive choreography. At the same time, it has come to be seen as the product of another erano longer shocking and maybe even a little, well, quaint.

This month, a new production of West Side Story, at the Palace Theatre, the first on Broadway in almost 30 years, aims to return it to the rough-and-tumble of living drama. As it turns out, the barbarianand directorat the gates is Laurents, one of the show's two surviving creators (the other is Sondheim). Fresh from his triumphant Gypsy with Patti LuPone, Laurents remains, at 91, an unstoppable force of nature, art, and commerce. "Arthur's old-schoolat his age, how could he be anything else?" says Matt Cavenaugh, who plays the ill-omened young lover Tony. "But he's not reverential toward the show. He's very much about what works now."

At this writing, Laurents is unavailable for an interview because he is, naturally, skiing in the French Alps. But he writes about his recent burst of creativity in his new book Mainly on Directing (Knopf), which he began after the death of his partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher. "If I was going to participate in life, it could only be in theatre," he writes, "but without him it could only be theatre that really excited mecertainly not a revival that was just another revival."

As evidenced by an early preview in Washington, D.C., Laurents has fulfilled that mandate, reconceiving many elements of the show, from the sets (James Youmans's brooding streetscapes add an air of menace) to his own dialogue. But not every innovation works: While Joey McKneely's re-creation of the original choreography shows why Robbins has yet to be equaled, the restaging of the slapstick "Gee, Officer Krupke" as a jittery expression of adolescent rage robs the evening of a showstopper.

Luckily, the energy of the new production is contagious. Standouts among the cast include the poised and leggy Karen Olivo ( In the Heights ) as the sizzling Anita and George Akram as her hotheaded lover, Bernardo. But West Side Story rises or falls with the star-crossed kids at its center. Cavenaugh, last seen on Broadway in A Catered Affair, brings all-American good looks and unforced simplicity to Tony, the gang member turned good guy with bad luck. But it is the stunning 21-year-old Argentine soprano Josefina Scaglione as Maria whose name you'll feel compelled to sing in the streets. As Cavenaugh says, "She doesn't have to pretend to be wide-eyed and curious, to be passionate, to be on the cusp of becoming a womanthat's who she is."