GILES WOODFORDE talks to the director of a 50th anniversary production of the classic West Side Story

Experts on BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow have been known to reprimand people who present cleaned-up pieces of antique jewellery for appraisal. If only they had left well alone, they are regretfully and politely informed, the items would now be worth so much more.

But does the same thing apply to a 50-year-old musical? Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story first opened on Broadway in 1957. Its raw Romeo and Juliet storyline replaced the traditional Montagues and Capulets with warring New York street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Tony, co-founder of the Jets, falls in love with Maria, brother of Bernardo, leader of the Sharks. The show became a 20th-century classic, its theme of teenage racial violence becoming ever more relevant down the years. But, risking the wrath of older West Side Story fans, German production company BB Group decided to give the show a polish-up for its 50th birthday. They had gone to an unlikely venue, La Scala, Milan — West Side Story was the first musical to be staged at this world-famous opera house — to see the existing show, complete with its original 1950s sets, and decided that it needed to be mounted on a larger scale.

Directing the Milan production was Joey McKneely, who was also responsible for reproducing Jerome Robbins’s famed choreography, which is as important as Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and Leonard Bernstein’s electrifying score.

“I never asked to do West Side Story,” Joey explained. “I didn’t lobby for it. I just picked up the phone one day, and someone said: ‘You were recommended to us, that you might be the next person to do it’. It was kind of like an arranged marriage. I’d never directed before, although I had my own career as a choreographer. Plus I had danced in Jerome Robbins’s Broadway back in the eighties — that was like a Jerome Robbins masterclass. We spent six months in rehearsal, eight hours a day.

“The same person had been reproducing Jerome Robbins’s original choreography since the early 1970s. There was a point in time where this museum quality felt of the 1950s. Everything was bulky, it took too long to move the set. It all felt as if it came from a different era.

"The producers wanted to make West Side Story more accessible to today’s audiences and that was the main reason I was brought on board. I’ve shaved ten minutes off the show by moving the scenery quicker and by not letting anyone sit about and wallow. We all think faster now than we did in 1957.”

Talking to Joey McKneely, it takes a maximum of 30 seconds to feel the missionary zeal with which he has undertaken his task. West Side Story seems to have taken over his entire life.

“I feel a great sense of responsibility, that it’s my job to bring the show to the next generation, so they can discover the importance of the choreography, as I did when I was a dancer. I’d never danced anything like that. It opened up a whole new world for me because I was dancing with emotion. It required me to invest my soul, my heart, all the anger of my youth. I finally had an outlet. There is something about West Side Story that makes performers reach higher.”

The 50th anniversary production looks substantially different to its predecessors. Gone are the rather dark sets, with their acres of high wire fences, over which the Jets and Sharks had to climb to get at each other’s throats. Instead, tall banks of metal fire escapes, so much a part of the New York street scene, are used in constantly changing combinations. Old black and white photographs are projected on to a backdrop, to add period atmosphere. Jerome Robbins’s original choreography, however, remains sacrosanct.

The new production opened at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, with a largely Canadian and American cast. But when we met, Joey was busy preparing to take the show out on the road.

“I’m beating up British dancers,” he laughed, almost apologetically. “West Side isn’t something that keeps running, where we just hire people and throw them in. Plus there’s this age requirement. Hopefully I’ll never be sued, but the Jets and Sharks are youthful gangs.

"Once dancers and actors get to a certain age, they lose touch with that hormonal energy that teenagers have, that the street kids would have. And they’ve got to have the right look — it’s very difficult to see a 31-year-old, or a fat Maria. Not that I have anything against weight-challenged people, but Tony is not going to fall in love with an overweight Maria. It’s just not going to happen — that’s not the story being told.

“There’s a lot of people who can sing and dance, but not a lot who can sing and dance well enough to do the show. It was very shocking to a lot of the people who came to audition for the UK tour: I saw 400 women in one single day. The most difficult thing is the technique — you need a ballet technique. For the singing, Tony has got to hit that B flat, and Maria has to reach a high C.”

The demands are one thing, but West Side Story needs more. How, I asked Joey, does he instil the necessary aggression and antagonism into the Jets and Sharks?

“I lead by example. I expose my emotions to them. I show them that it’s ok to feel. We all have anger, whether it’s at our father, our mother, or our teacher. Aggression and hatred comes from pain and fear — racism, I believe, comes primarily from fear. And a lot of it is psychiatry, and giving them energy — getting up and screaming in their face: ‘See, that’s how it’s done’. Then I give them the tools to expose their own emotions.

"It’s particularly difficult to get British performers to expose their emotions — it’s the same with the Japanese. You ask a British man: ‘What do you do when you get angry?’ and he will simply reply: ‘Oh, I go and have a pint’.”

West Side Story is at Milton Keynes Theatre from next Tuesday until Saturday, September 27. For tickets call 0870 060 6652 or visit www.miltonkeynestheatre.com The production also tours to the Wycombe Swan in February. Tickets 01494 512000 or www.wycombeswan.co.uk