To be clear, this isn’t a blanket condemnation of fixing something that wasn’t broke. This gives the experience an odd, juddering quality: the knowledge that we’re always, somehow, watching someone good at their worst. Few people on earth can emote in close-up for the camera and reality’s “wide shot” simultaneously it’s an actor’s nightmare. Attention, both the audience’s and the performers’, is critically divided. If Pimentel’s Maria seems less able to escape the show’s occasional sabotage, her soprano is keenly lovely, a silvery fretwork above the rest of the ensemble’s brassy, swaggering noise.īut when this West Side Story wants to be gritty, van Hove’s sexy-wexy backdrop choices make it cheesy and anodyne when a performer tries to be genuine, some awkward live zoom will reveal artificiality. Powell’s superb Tony vibrates with energy and puppyish optimism his rendition of “Maria” is revelatory, a show-and-heart-stopper. There are certainly a few fine elements in the show, and Maria (Shereen Pimentel) and Tony (Isaac Powell) - clear, sweet-voiced, unaffected - do their iconic parts proud. The tussle is happening right in the middle of West Side Story, where the Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s revival has been mortally divided against itself, done to death by its own staging and design choices.ĭominated by an IMAX-size projection wall showing all manner of video - a live feed of actors on- or backstage, pre-shot film of New York streets at night - the production seems perversely gifted at finding the exact mode that will interfere with each moment and intention. There’s a rumble on Broadway right now, and - just as with those poor unfortunate Jets and Sharks - nobody’s winning.
The balcony-less balcony scene in West Side Story, at the Broadway Theatre.
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