Legendary nanogenarian director Arthur Laurents - whose production of Gypsy is currently playing as part of Encores! Summer Stars with Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti as stars - will next helm a production of his 1957 classic West Side Story. According to the New York Post's Michael Riedel, it will bow on Broadway next year.
"I've come up with a way of doing it that will make it absolutely contemporary without changing a word or a note...And what will annoy you is that I'm not going to tell you what it is," stated the ever-feisty Laurents, who expressed disappointment with the last 1980 West Side Story revival. Both Gypsy and West Side Story feature books penned by Laurents and lyrics by Sondheim; they wrote Gypsy with Jule Styne and West Side Story with Leonard Bernstein.
Tony Award-winner Laurents, who is 90, also penned the books of such musicals as Hallelujah, Baby!, Do I Hear a Waltz?, and Anyone Can Whistle (which he also directed), among others. He also wrote the plays Invitation to a March (which he also directed), A Clearing in the Woods, The Time of the Cuckoo and Home of the Brave. Other Broadway directorial credits include La Cage aux Folles. He also penned the screenplays of The Way We Were and The Turning Point, among others.
A modern urban adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story sets the ill-fated love affair of Tony, who is white, and Maria, who is Puerto Rican, against the backdrop of New York City gang war between the Jets and the Sharks. With legendary direction and choreography by Jerome Robbins (who won a Tony Award for the latter), West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26th, 1957 and ran for 732 performances. It starred Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert and Chita Rivera. The 1961 film version, directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, won the 1962 Oscar for Best Picture, as well as awards for Wise and Robbins, and supporting stars Rita Moreno and George Chakiris, among others. The film version starred Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as Maria and Tony.
