MY (WEST SIDE) STORY

by

Robert Landau

As a teen-ager Mr. Landau had the enviable good fortune of seeing five performances of the masterwork in both the original production and the Broadway return engagement. Today he generously shares with us his memories of this special experience.

Saturday Matinee, November 23, 1957 I am fourteen years old, well-versed in musical theater, and I have seen most of the major musicals of the last six years. When I entered the Winter Garden I had never heard the score, and though I was familiar with Romeo and Juliet, I had no idea how closely the musical would follow the original. The cast album had been released only a few weeks before: my sense is that, like me, most of the audience hadn’t heard it. So everything was a complete surprise.

Everyone has their own transformative experience in the theater---this one was mine, so rather than throwing adjectives around, I will try to give an overall description, with certain moments that stand out in my memory.

Hank Brunjes

First: Overture over. Conductor Max Goberman takes a bow, then sits on the conductor’s stool--curtain not up yet. All black. Then slowly, the curtain rises, there are the four Jets with Riff (Hank Brunjes filling in for Mickey Calin) in the center. Thirty seconds of silence-then, almost unobtrusively, Brunjes lifts his arm as the music begins.

Next moment: Beginning of the fourth sequence of opening scene: Jets and Sharks have just faced off, they withdraw, Action remains with one Shark---the stare, the "after you" gesture, the bow, then "poom!" one of them slugs the other in the stomach---audience reacts with surprise, did not expect this. Opening scene continues.

During "Maria," I make a mental note: Larry Kert's voice reminds me of Jack Cassidy's and William Tabbert's (who originated the role of Cable in South Pacific). Play continues. Amazed at the rumble, as the curtain falls, Tony does that incredible scale of the fence. During intermission I remind myself that the double murder mirrors Romeo and Juliet, but I never expected it.

"Officer Krupke" seems to come out of nowhere, extremely funny, but Eddie Roll as Action does not play it for laughs (at least not to my memory) just a continuation of the rage, put in another direction. Afterwards, the audience does not want to stop applauding---seems endless, we have all discovered something funny in the middle of the intensity---what a relief! Play continues without losing any strength, as lights go up on Tony and Maria in bed together.

Still can hear Chita Rivera saying "And you still don't know---Tony is one of them!"

Finally, the murder of Tony, final scene, curtain calls. The audience is very appreciative. We are totally exhausted. As we leave the theater my father says to my brother and myself: "I can't believe they can do it again tonight." That sums it up; everything was so real, the energy, the rage never let up----it almost seems impossible that cast can recreate this.

Impressions: The hatred and intensity of those kids were palpable. Nobody "acted" anger or toughness, the cast seemed to truly live through it.

The cast was incredible, but two performances stand out in the memory as defining: Hank Brunjes as Riff, with his cat-like looks but benign presence underneath, showed really cool leadership qualities, always felt that he was in charge until his death, missed in the second act.

The second was Eddie Roll as Action--really over the top, the one Jet with absolutely no limits, almost an animal, his intensity really made you feel the anger, which carried over to the others. Again, I think that is why "Gee, Officer Krupke" was such a surprise, he stayed in character, never lost the rage while singing it---it was not a "comic piece" per se.

Saturday matinee, March 22, 1958: I got a standing room (which in the Winter Garden was really a bench that one sat on in the back of the orchestra). First time I had ever done that, very daring for me. Cast complete except for Stephanie Augustine replacing Carol Lawrence who sprained her ankle. This may have been Chita Rivera's last matinee (she was leaving because she was pregnant with the baby of her then-husband Tony Mordente). Strangely, I remember the experience as a "competent" one, rather than exceptional, but that is probably me. Audience loved it, Mickey Calin more low-key but an excellent Riff, everyone else doing great. Not much more I can say.

Al De Sio

Muriel Bentley

Saturday, August 30, 1958. Outside in front of the Winter Garden it says West Side Story with Larry Kert and Carol Lawrence, but in the program Don McKay is listed as Tony and Marlys Watters will play Maria. Very excited as these two will play those roles in the upcoming London production, also I wonder what a different Tony would be like. Al De Sio plays A-rab and Erne Castaldo plays Chino.

And Don McKay is different! Blond and about three inches taller (and also heavier) than Larry Kert, he has none of Larry Kert's grace; I remember thinking he might break the fire escape as he climbs it, he looks like he easily could. He and Ms Watters are okay, but there is something tentative about their work---even to my almost-fifteen-year-old eyes, I could see they were finding their way. Rest of the cast is great, however, Muriel Bentley now Anita, does a solid job. Then the final scene. When Tony is shot, and falls into Maria's arms, McKay seems to discover an intensity and passion that were not there before. An exciting new energy between McKay and Watters in the death scene; then Watters seems to explode as she does the final monologue. Everything stops, this is something new. Curtain falls, cast comes out for their bows. As Watters and McKay take their bow together (the final bow was Maria, Tony and Anita, together, they never took individual ones) they point to conductor Max Goberman. I am close enough to see him---he has tears in his eyes and he is blowing them kisses, as if he had witnessed something truly new and beautiful. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like that. I leave the theater feeling that I had made an incredible discovery.

Gus Trikonis

Saturday, April 25, 1959. Of the original cast Kert, Lawrence, Lee Becker, Jaime Sanchez, Lowell Harris, Frank Green and Al De Sio, along with Arch Johnson and William Bramley (remember the adults?) still remain. Gus Trikonis makes a strong Action, George Marcy a good replacement for Ken LeRoy. Al De Sio whom I liked in the last performance a good A-rab, and because Eliot Feld is finishing his classes at PA (Performing Arts HS) he is not playing Baby John, Gary Scharff, who seems to have been plugged in at the last minute is doing it. He is tentative, but has a nice quality. The musical is now at the Broadway Theater, it had to leave the Winter Garden in February for a play called Juno with music by Mark Blitzstein.

Basically a solid performance, lots of school kids in the audience---when Riff is killed, somebody calls out "So where is the ketchup?" to a few laughs but the performers don't pay attention and the play is a success.

Afterwards my brother and I wait in the alley to the south of the theater where the actors come out (it is no longer there) and since I interviewed Larry Kert a few months earlier we say hello. He is very nice and we talk briefly.

Saturday, May 14 1960: West Side Story has triumphantly returned, and returned to its home base, the Winter Garden. Ms. Lawrence starred in a musical by Harold Arlen called Saratoga there, earlier that winter, which did not do well, so the two musicals that opened in West Side Story's absence, Juno and that one, seem cursed, for wanting to take West Side Story's place.

George Liker

Carol Lawrence is back with Larry Kert, and Allyn Ann McLerie is now playing Anita. Ted Gunther from the London company plays Schrank, he lacks Arch Johnson's charisma, but has a grosser, tougher quality. The production (Robbins had worked with it before it re-opened) seems streamlined---tight but a little less intense. George Liker is the Action--he is good, but some of the fierceness of Eddie Roll or Gus Trikonis has been lost. Also Martin Charnin, the original Big Deal has returned, and his role has been enlarged---it is now his and Snowboy's combined. Also it is now he who is the "victim-narrator" of Officer Krupke, Liker plays the Judge. This also puts a little more comic emphasis on the number, but it is still effective. Robbins has restaged "I Feel Pretty" so that Carol Lawrence gets to dance a lot more---also, the final moment of Tony in Maria's arms is played much more deliberately than I remember---something else Robbins wanted. Finally the ending---in the original Jets and Sharks somberly walked out together, so there was a sense that they were finally understanding that they were both victims, and I suppose that might be considered hopeful. Here, after one or two Jets and Sharks walked off side by side, at least two others remained staring at each other---and the curtain fell. I suppose since then it has never really been clear how the play ends with different directors doing different things; Robbins seemed to have come around to the fact that this was more real and he wanted it that way.

Bob Landau directed many projects off-off-Broadway during the eighties and nineties. During that time he also evaluated plays for the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. He currently substitute teaches in both private and public schools around the city and tutors in the different boroughs.

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