Word: gangs
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...this new production, directed by Arthur Laurents - author of the original book and now 91 years old - the story is what seems least compelling. Partly this is due to the competent but bland cast. As Tony, leader of the Anglo gang the Jets, Matt Cavenaugh is an attractive, sweet-voiced Broadway leading man, but he doesn't look like he could survive a game of touch football, must less a gang rumble. As Maria, the virginal Puerto Rican girl he falls for, newcomer Josefina Scaglione has a lovely voice and good energy but seems to be acting by the numbers...
...some of the fault, I think, lies in the original script, which might be hefty enough for a sung-through opera but here seems too thin to live up to its ambitions. I don't expect a stage musical about street gangs to have the grit or nuance of the better Hollywood films of the same era, like Blackboard Jungle or Rebel Without a Cause (though a cast of gang members who didn't look like they stepped out of a Chorus Line audition might help). But I do want a love story with at least a hint of conviction...
...tossed in to keep the Anglo customers from drifting off in confusion, and I, for one, do not miss the English lyrics to "I Feel Pretty." Still, it seems like a gimmick: "realism" in a genre that depends on stylization for its very existence. This is a show where gang members do ballet leaps in the streets, for gosh sakes...
...trying to reflect what readers saw on cable TV the day before? Publish local school lunch menus, city-hall doings and, yes, local police and court reports. As for coverage from Baghdad and Kabul, editors can rely on the Associated Press and other news organizations with respected reporters. Gang reporting wastes time and money. Frank Real, Palmer, Mass...
...were almost entirely with regard to highly partisan judicial appointments. For his major initiatives—No Child Left Behind, prescription drugs, tax cuts, the Iraq and Afghan wars, immigration—Bush received significant Democratic support. Democrats struck a deal about judicial appointments through the “gang of 14,” which smoothed the way for the confirmation of a slew of Bush appointments. There were no serious challenges to the appointments of Supreme Court justices Samuel A. Alito and John G. Roberts ’76, in spite of their manifestly conservative philosophies...