Forkish Reviews: West Side Snorey

There's a reason the Jets have trouble playing it cool, boy.

It's because they all have 'roid rage.

Every one of the goofy, pirhouetting gang members wear little to no sleeves, showing us that the Jets were the true pioneers of physical fitness back in the early sixties when gyms had not yet been widely embraced by society.

Early sixties or whenever they've decided to set this flaccid revival of West Side Story now playing at the Palace Theatre.

For while the script is in tact (replete with embarassing 'daddy-o's and all that fun jive talk that was dated by the time the original production got out of previews), the cast looks like a bunch of 21st century twenty-something hipsters who just got back from raiding the vintage clothing shops in the West Village.

Someone must've misinterpreted the choreographer's request to make dancers "look more in sync" (an unfortunate problem with the 'ogrophy which will likely become worse with future changes to the ensemble) with making the dancers "look more N*SYNC".

The exception is in the production's Tony (Matt Cavenaugh) and Maria (Josefina Scaglione). Maria looks (and acts) like she hasn't yet had her quinsineara and Tony looks like he could be her father.

Taller, older, and even more ridiculously muscled than any of the other kids on the block, it begs the question, in those brief scenes where we see Tony at his job--the job description apparently being: must be able to wipe a bunch of stuff with a rag--how heavy is that rag anyway? Because Tony looks less like Romeo and more like he's training to be a space marine on some distant mining colony.

Indeed, instead of singing "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria" it might be more appropriate to change the lyrics to "Jailbait, I just met a girl who is jailbait."

After all, they've done changed enough of the songs as it is. You see, in attempting to keep up with the In the Heights Joneses, the director went with the bold, fresh choice of making 75% of all the Puerto Rican songs and dialogue Spanish.

Now, I was down with that concept in short scenes. It added a nice vocal layer that was pleasing to the ear. But in the longer scenes that take place in Maria's apartment--(or CASTLE? This West Side Story's famous fire-escape version of "the balcony scene" goes for broke and gets an ACTUAL Romeo and Juliet-style BALCONY. Think of the parties she could throw on that thing!)--in those longer scenes where it's just two "P.R.'s" on stage, you get that same funny longing to hear English after watching too much Telemundo.

And a number of these well-known songs are sung en Espaniol as well.

And so, okay. I'm all right with this Spanish thing in short bursts of dialogue. I understand. You want to make the $100-a-seat Broadway show more accessible to the mobs of young Latinos from the Barrio who are clammoring for expensive orchestra seats every night. I dig it, daddy-o.

But that means all the old Jewish ladies (who made up the VAST majority of the audience last night) are going to be awfully crestfallen when they find they can't sing along to the all-Spanish version of "I Feel Pretty".

It's weird. It's the same thing that left me scratching my head at the end of In the Heights. You try to make your show accessable to the ethnic masses and bring a little taste of the slums into a Broadway theatre. Then you charge $120 a seat to sing about it and the only people who can afford the tickets are cheery white tourists.

If that ain't irony I don't know what is.

The show isn't hateful. It's not AWFUL. It's just really disappointing. It's so safe and stagnant when compared to the abusive shows like Spring Awakening that it comes off as corny--the ULTIMATE no-no when you're trying to convince a corn-o-phobic public that Broadway musicals can kick ass too.

Even the excellent revival of South Pacific managed to evolve gracefully with these cynical times. That show feels every bit like the piece of expensive, mature entertainment that it is with its well-crafted sense of impending doom. Nellie may be as corny as Kansas in August, but that happily pitch-dark production certainly isn't.

We live in an age where the grisly Watchmen is the flick of the week. Entertainment centering around violence--from music to video games to wrestling--has become much more in-your-face. And while, yes, dancing is pretty, we can't accept twinkle-toes dance moves for urban gang warfare anymore.

I earnestly believe a 2009 revival of West Side Story should be rated R. As it stands now, it's fun for the whole family.

The other problems are manifold: the flimsy and surprisingly uncreative set pieces, lack of chemistry between Tony and Maria, Riff's unfortunate lisp, dull staging (Tony steps through Maria's open window with comical nonchalance), tons of dead air that cause the snappy dialogue to sag...

But all these pale in comparison to the ultimate sin: Mr. Cavenaugh's mouth-coveringly bad performance.

It's right up there on Seagull level, folks. He may have won the critics over, somehow, but I'm here today to tell you the tenory, hyper-nasal "New Broadway" voice emitting from his massive bulk made my brain hurt. Cavenaugh is simply too big and too old to play a Romeo. In trying to "act" 17 while flexing his bodybuilder arms and singing through his nose about being in love with a 12 year old girl and "why can't we all just get along?", this Tony doesn't feel like a hero. He feels like a goober.

It would be one thing if, when the bodies start piling up, we caught a glimpse of the "HULK SMASH!" power that made Tony the original leader of the gang.

But since we never see it, since he plays Tony like a muscle-bound pansy and a dope--his Maria certainly doesn't help by treating him like a buffoon so she can score some laughs from the audience (which she looked VERY proud of, I might add)--you don't really care when they fire that cap-gun at him in the end. And that's a BIG problem.

At least Anita was good--when you could understand her. But what made her good was all that anachronistic sass. I don't care who you are, everyone cheers when they see a girl snap and do that head-swivel thing.

All this leads me to an unfortunate conclusion: maybe 'West Side Story' isn't really that great of a show. Don't get me wrong, the music is still marvelous.

But when you watch this production, you start to feel as though this musical was one of those musician/choreographer vanity-projects. Some folks who don't know anything about Shakespeare decide they're going to be cutting-edge and write a hip, all singing, all dancing modern day version of 'Romeo and Juliet'. Yeah! The kids will go NUTS! It'll be exciting!

But this production is NOT exciting. It feels like an antique. It's quaint. You start to feel that the show exists merely to showcase the songs and dance numbers instead of telling a story by seamlessly weaving in song, dance, acting, the whole bit, which is what a great musical is supposed to do. It struck me that Bernstein probably intended for the show to just be a ballet--it would be his "Raphsody in Blue"--but figured he could make more money by making it into a musical.

Songs pop up seemingly out of nowhere, and, in the case of the disappointing 'Officer Krupke' number, at completely inappropriate times (where is the shrewd revivalist director who can see the 'Play it Cool' song belongs in the second act?). The stakes are low. The cast lacks energy. The stage combat looks fake. The dancing fights are sloppy when they don't look totally gay.

And those of us who were hoping for a bold, bracing revival, something a little more keeping with the original intent of crafting a bad-ass musical retelling of R&J, will wring our hands and wonder why, WHY, after all these decades, Maria STILL doesn't have the huevos to shoot herself in the end.

Little old ladies are sure to love it.