Theatre Review of West Side Story, November 2024

It was a show that will live long in memory – and in the heart too. It was three nights, in fact, when Merchant Taylors’ School reverberated to the sounds of 1950s West Side Manhattan, the Great Hall its own island of energy, dance and song; but for the many people involved in this most ambitious of musicals, there will have been many more nights and days just as long that went into the three months of rehearsals. There will have been teams within teams, so many moving parts… and when they all came together, the result was unforgettable. 

West Side Story is a musical that bites. Right from the very beginning there was New York edginess on stage: partly the latent danger of Savio Gimmi’s set of fire escape ladders, gang graffiti, the cynical Coca-Cola billboard and the switch-blade spotlights; partly the dark, stilted dissonance of Bernstein’s music; but above all, the razzle dazzle of the cast, who never moved but with swagger and posturing and if that very moment would be the be all and end all. Nearly every movement, Assistant Director Alan Richardson was telling me, is stylised, and progress in rehearsals could be painstakingly slow. But didn’t it pay off?

This is the American Romeo & Juliet of the 20th Century, one where the tragedy of star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria, the brilliant Jai E and Anoushka B, is almost engulfed by the desperate hopes and fears of those around them. It’s a familiar story. There is no going back to Puerto Rico for those who want to live in America and there is nowhere else to go for the immigrants who got there before them: "When You’re a Jet You’re a Jet". And didn’t those numbers set the tone for the whole production: unequivocal, no backing down. In many ways it was Ben W’s Riff, Ravin A’s Bernardo and Maahi D’s Anita who carried the deeper story of the show, characters fatefully locked together by circumstance in a dance of death. Ben was all quick eyes and movement, quicker still to anger, febrile, proud, afraid. Ravin embodied the Latino machismo, the protective call of his kind, impetuous, proud, afraid. But it was Maahi’s Anita who, for my money, attracted the most sympathy of the night. Like Maria, she loses her lover to violence, but she has been in America long enough to lose her idealism too; the man she loves is wedded to the ways of the old country and in Maria she sees the dream of a girl that was always beyond her. In a mature performance, Maahi captured the sadness that lies at the heart of the most complex and vivacious character in the show.

It was from these characters that nearly everyone on stage else took their cue, and there were memorable performances from among the supporting cast of Jets and Sharks. Reese R played a good Chino as the decent boy driven to revenge. Cormac A’s sleeveless A-Rab was all wired muscle and David A always looked dangerous and frenetic in the role of Big Deal. But it was Milan A’s bravura as Action that whipped up an energy of almost iconoclastic proportions on stage, leading a glorious ensemble performance of ‘Officer Krupke’ which brought the house down. There were others, too, transformed from the courteous gentlemen of our classrooms – Matt M, Owen S, Alex E, Peter B, Jos W, Yuvraj B, Harry P, Praniv A, Charlie S, Oscar R, George R and Monty H (swapping the Scouse accent of Our Day Out this time for a Puerto Rican burr) – into hardened gang members, as ready as to fight as to dance as to sing.

West Side Story demands complex choreography in a range of dance styles; Cheryl Clarke, Kelly Chamberlain and the Dance Captains of St Helen’s created some stunning movement pieces performed by the large ensemble poise and precision. Certainly, the girls from St Helen’s seized the moment for their own scene-stealing number, the great ‘America’, which wowed the audience with their exuberance and choreography. Alongside Maahi D, there were scintillating cameos from Merissa W as Rosalia and Janae G as Consuelo. Hats off to the dance captains Olivia G, Sanaa K, Isabella C, Lara G and the back-flipping Seb W. Watching on, my nine-year-old daughter, attending her first musical of this kind, declared this her favourite number, not only because of its irresistible foot-drumming beat, but also because ‘America’ is the song which is everyone’s story. One cannot help but wonder the difference it would have made had these women been granted a greater license than that allowed by 1950s gender and cultural expectations: no ‘rumble’ after all. In this respect, Sadie M in her tomboyish role of Anybodys gave a poignant depiction of a character alive before her time.

The adult characters seem equally powerless to prevent tragedy following its inevitable course and only remind us, as with Shakespeare, of the youth of our protagonists. Luca M’s Doc was a lone moral voice in an adult world otherwise complicit in the racial prejudice which this musical bravely exposes. Aarin K-P played an almost pantomime villain as Lieutenant Shrank, with Georgios K in the role of Officer Krupke, his knuckle-head sidekick. Ed A was that mix of high-school teacher-cum-impresario for the maelstrom of the formal dance, but his only authority lay in providing the fateful occasion for Riff to throw down the gauntlet to Bernardo and to bring our lovers together for the first time. 

It seems impossible that amid all the clamour of the framing narrative, we still have space for a love story. But that is the beauty of this musical, with our two central characters inhabiting a story and a place that often seems removed from everything else. They somehow find the gaps in-between things: under stages, in stairwells, on balconies, in a shop after hours, in stolen moments. Love, even forbidden love, will find a way. It was in these blissful moments that shouldn’t be that our two main characters, Jai E’s Tony and Anoushka B’s Maria, lifted everyone to somewhere better. ‘See only me’ Maria says, and we willingly obey.  They acted and sang, both individually and together, quite beautifully. Congratulations must go to Dan Tonks for his coaching as repetiteur. Jai’s ‘Maria’ was sung with all the wonder of young love this number needs, hitting the high notes even as the audience braced in anticipation. After the horror of the rumble, I don’t think there was anybody who didn’t want to join Anoushka feeling ‘Pretty’ in the raptures of love. Their tender duet of ‘Tonight’ gave us a melody that resonated throughout the rest of the story, reappearing much later in the heartbreaking final duet of ‘Somewhere’. Whenever Jai and Anoushka were on stage, to lean on Sondheim’s lyrics, the world went away and we suddenly found how wonderful a sound can be, no more so than in the reconciliation following the tragic denouement.

That sound came from more than mere voices. At the foot of the stage was undoubtedly the largest orchestra I have ever seen at a school production. At the twitch of Simon Couldridge’s baton – these are surely the moments he lives for – the whole performance on stage was elevated to yet further heights of emotion by an enormous groundswell of music. It was a marvel to listen to, wonderful to be part of: boys and staff alike. Jonah G on drums spoke of the exhilaration of playing alongside so many professional musicians; this was a moment when the school comes together as a community inspired by a common purpose. It is a reminder that so much of a production of this scale goes unseen; there is, indeed, a whole other performance taking place behind the scenes, masterminded by people like Philip Hoyle and Alan Richardson as Stage Manager and Assistant Director respectively. Katy Younge must have been a flurry of costume, hair and make-up to make everyone look so convincingly 1950s. Whether part of the stage management or technical teams, the boys deserve special credit for the slick production quality of the performance. Earphones on, Charlie J was beaming in his element, ably joined by Zachary S, Lu’ay Ben A, Aaron S, Pranay P, Chaitya J, Samuel H, Thomas B, James S and Nikita K. They looked every inch the professional outfit, perched high on their rig of mysterious dials and levers, and reassuring the audience on arrival into the Hall that we were in safe hands.

The most elusive person on the night was the Director herself, Cheryl Clarke. I did wonder how on earth she was going to match or even top her previous blockbuster shows of Les Miserables and F.A.M.E. The Musical, especially given the complexity and attention to every detail that a production of West Side Story demands. But she has done it again, very well done. This was a bona fide hit, one nominated no less for a National School Theatre Award; it was that good. Only those who have directed themselves can really know what it is like to take a show all the way from conception to performance: how you carry it everywhere and at all times, constantly revolving scenes through your mind. It calls for utter emotional investment. And then, as the lights come up, you let go… (a strange business Show Business) …and hand it all over to your magnificent cast.

My sincere congratulations to everyone involved, extending all the way to Kevin Sharrock and his front of house teams, and to anyone who volunteered in some way to make this show a night to remember. Just as the audience were sung a tender ‘Good Night’ at the close, so too have the cast, musicians and crew of West Side Story deserved a sweet rest this Christmas. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Berstein and Sondheim make an encore appearance as we weave a few more lights around our family tree this Sunday.

Mr M Hilton-Dennis

Head of English