A revival of West Side Story – Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ lavish 1957 New York gangland musical reworking of Romeo & Juliet – is a huge undertaking and a once-in-a-generation event: there hasn’t been a major London production since the tail-end of the ’90s. Now Marianne Elliott and her occasional directorial collaborator Miranda Cromwell power through the disappointment of Elliott’s 2027 revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George being cancelled to bring West Side Story back for the first original London production this century. Telling the tragic love story of star cross’d lovers Tony and Maria – members of warring teenage gangs the Jets and the Sharks – it’s a banger-stuffed classic and you can expect the NT to pull out all the stops for a production that will see Jerome Robbins' original choreography reproduced and adapted by Julio Monge, artistic collaborator and consultant on Steven Spielberg's 2021 film adaptation.
All eyes will be on the casting, though given the youthful nature of the characters expect it to be more a case of ‘stars of tomorrow’ than stars of today – which is all the more exciting (there was, famously, an open casting call).
A three-month-run at the National Theatre is scarcely credible as the entire life of a show of this magnitude: unless the reviews are absolutel toxic then a further life – either at the NT or more likely in the West End – seems absolutely priced in.
