Word: sided
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...someone who likes to think I have a fairly complete education in the Broadway musical, however, one show holds a special place: West Side Story. Of all the widely accepted masterpieces of the genre, it's the one I have never seen onstage. Nor even - until a few weeks ago, when I finally broke down and rented the DVD - the multiple-Oscar-winning 1961 movie. Of course, I know most of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score; I've seen enough clips to be familiar with the famed Jerome Robbins choreography; and I'd have to be a pretty benighted...
Still, last week's opening of a new revival of West Side Story - the first on Broadway since 1980 - gave me the rare opportunity of encountering an American musical classic in the way, by rights, every show ought to be encountered: as if for the first time. No memories of the original to protect - or, conversely, any need for a radical reinvention to renew my interest. No, I came to West Side Story simply to find out whether, in 2009, the show still entertains, excites, lives up to its gargantuan reputation. And my verdict, alas, is: Not quite...
...sure, you can't look at West Side Story totally removed from the era that produced it. When it opened, in 1957, Broadway musicals were almost all comedies, set in sentimental fantasylands, whether exotic (The King and I), nostalgic (The Music Man) or contemporary but cartoonish (Guys and Dolls). Here, instead, was an effort to use the musical form to explore serious contemporary social issues: urban slums, race prejudice, the scourge (ah, the '50s!) of "juvenile delinquency." It was also a groundbreaking marriage of pop entertainment and "high culture": choreography that featured classical ballet moves, a score with elements...
...this West Side Story revival worth seeing? Sure it is. The show's daring, its social message, its innovative use of dance, are still impressive - for both a West Side Story veteran and a virgin. But unlike some other recent Broadway comebacks (the revival of Hair, for example), I didn't come away feeling that a great show had had its place in Broadway history triumphantly renewed. I left the theater with the gnawing sense that a revered Broadway classic may have seen better days...
...second floor of what was once a school in east Mosul, an Iraqi Army medic stuck his chin out a hallway window and shaved over the courtyard. On either side of him in the dingy hallway light, detainees sat facing the wall, blankets cast over their heads. The Iraqi Army had brought them in on a tip from a man they caught with bomb making materials, and a U.S. Army platoon had just arrived. As the medic flicked his razor and turned his small mirror, the American soldiers stood the detainees up one by one, scanned their retinas, took their...