Still show of gold

In his preview of this terrific show in last week’s Oxford Times, my colleague Giles Woodforde reflects that an expert will tell you not to clean up a piece of antique jewellery, and wonders whether the same applies to a 50-year-old musical. Having now seen it I can say that, just as jewellery may lose the patina and even the hint of grime that gives it character, a tidied up, meticulously reproduced musical may lose some of the heat and sweat and anger that lies at its passionate heart. This is the case with this 50th anniversary touring production of what many see as the greatest musical of all.

But does it matter? West Side Story has the most impeccable of credentials: music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and choreographed and directed by Jerome Robbins, one of the greatest dance-makers of the last century. Their work is of such outstanding quality that it’s a pleasure just to see it performed.

The producer Joey McKneely has gone to great lengths to reproduce the original in every detail. Only the sets have been changed — into a collage of rusting tenement staircases and balconies, which move as the location changes. I hardly need tell you this is Romeo and Juliet transposed to the mean streets of 1950s' New York, with peer pressure from the rival gangs replacing parental disapproval as the obstacle to the lovers' union.

The first act is full of dancing, opening with the famous finger-snapping confrontation between the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, and throughout it’s high-quality stuff. The leaders of the two gangs are powerfully played by Howard Jones and Dan Burton, but the weakness is the casting of Daniel Koek as Tony. He sings the familiar numbers beautifully, and acts well, but he seems just too old and — no fault of his — too tall for the diminutive Maria. No dancer himself, his movement too looks rather awkward when contrasted with the rest of the male cast.

Sofia Escobar’s Maria, on the other hand, is probably the best performance I have seen in a musical. With her classically trained voice she is able to soar through her songs or, equally, sing in a kind of passionate whisper. But it’s her acting that brings Maria alive — an enchanting young girl on the brink of womanhood, just arrived in America, she is thrilled by the new life she envisages, and totally overcome by her sudden and unexpected love for a man unacceptable to her own people. She ranges easily from joy to tenderness to sorrow. Her cry of anguish over Tony’s body is heart-rending.