West Side Story Revival To Include New Songs By Sheik/Sater

According to the musical's bookwriter, Arthur Laurents, the Broadway revival of West Side Story projected for the 2008-09 season will feature a revised score with new songs by the Spring Awakening team of composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater.

"We're not scraping the whole Bernstein/Sondheim score," says Laurents, who will direct the production, "but I want to make this a West Side Story that really speaks to the kids today.  We had some preliminary meetings with Steve (Sondheim) and he's okay with allowing Duncan and Steven to help us fix some of the flaws."

"For example, I always wanted Maria to have a song at the end instead of that long monologue with the gun and Duncan and Steven wrote a great one already.  Something about an orange winter and the word of your bullets.  I have no idea what it means but it's very fresh and contemporary."

"We're also cutting 'Gee, Officer Krupke,'" continues Laurents, "and replacing it with that song, 'Totally Fucked,' which I think is a more realistic expression of what the characters are feeling at the time.  And we're going to use that jumping up and down choreography, too.  I mean, what Jerome Robbins did was good but it takes too long to learn.  Why waste all that rehearsal time and money teaching those complicated ballet steps when audiences go nuts for all that jumping up and down?"

"'Totally Fucked' really is the universal showtune," says Sater.  "It expresses in general terms an emotion that comes up in nearly every musical.  Duncan and I are seriously considering allowing all Broadway revivals interpolate 'Totally Fucked' into their scores.  Billy Bigelow can sing 'Totally Fucked' instead of 'Soliloquy.'  Tevye can sing it when the Cossacks ruin his daughter's wedding.  It works in every show."

Says composer Sheik, "Steven gave me a copy of the CD last week.  There's some good music in the show but it can use some work.  Did this ever play on Broadway?"

"I've learned a lot about lyric writing in the short time I've spent with Steven Sater," says Sondheim.  "For example, this whole business about slant rhyming.  I've spent over fifty years writing for Broadway knocking myself out trying to come up with perfect rhymes but I never knew that audiences won't mind if you just write something that comes sort of close to being a rhyme.  If I knew that back in the 60s I could have written twice as many musicals in my career.  And maybe one or two of them might have made some money."

Photo of Arthur Laurents by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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Thank you to Jena Tesse Fox for her creative input.