

I caught the last performance of West Side Story at Istana Budaya on Monday - thanks to facebook, and both my lovely daughters. Of course, I had read about the Original Broadway version of this timelessly enthralling musical opening in Kuala Lumpur on 12 May 2010. But a quick look at the ticket prices - ranging from RM190 to RM590 - was enough to blot this event completely from my mind.

Anyway, I got a brief message Friday from Belle on my facebook wall asking if I had seen West Side Story and which character I had played in the 1976 local production staged by opera aficionado Kam Sun Yoke. I remember driving from Ampang Hilir to some school hall behind the old EPF building in PJ two or three times a week for rehearsals - which dragged on for months. Luckily, back in the mid-1970s, I could drive the distance in 15-20 minutes. The kids would occasionally accompany me to rehearsals. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but Belle said they both were furious with the guy who played Bernardo for killing my character, Riff, whom they saw as their Daddy.

On Sunday I received an email from Belle with an e-ticket attached for the 24 May performance of West Side Story. She had bought me a stall seat, three rows from the orchestra pit. She and her sister Moon were picking up the tab, she explained, as an early Father's Day present.

The sheer vibrancy and originality of the musical score by Leonard Bernstein (right) blew my young mind. Whatever musical taste I may claim to possess today can be traced back to that early encounter with pure inspiration and pizzazz. A year or so later, the movie version of West Side Story opened in a Singapore cinema and my parents were sweet enough to take me to the show (which I must have seen at least seven times when it finally played in my hometown cinema).


Natalie Wood's Maria and Richard Beymer's Tony, for anyone whose first introduction to West Side Story was the 1961 movie which won 10 Academy Awards, will forever be held up as the standard by which all other aspiring Marias and Tonys will be assessed. Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris as Riff and Bernardo, leaders of the Jets and the Sharks, also created an indelible impression on me, as did Rita Moreno's definitive Anita.


The producer, Sun Yoke, insisted on playing Maria, though she was at least a dozen years older than Jude Sta Maria, who played Tony. Well, apart from the fact that Sun Yoke was the producer-director, she also happened to be an opera singer with a beautiful voice, which more than made up for her no longer looking like a 16-year-old virgin.

The choreography - mostly borrowed from a video of the film and from memory - was slapped together by Suet Lyn and Suzan Manen, two ballet teachers who also played Riff and Bernardo's girlfriends. Midway through the rehearsals, Chin San Sooi was recruited as co-director.

One night after a particularly smooth performance, a self-assured American lady barged in backstage where the cast was busy removing makeup and changing into street clothes. She made a beeline for me, beaming brightly as she boomed, "I want you!" Funny, I thought, she doesn't look like Uncle Sam, so I just looked bewildered. "Ha, I've found my Snoopy!" Patricia Lockwood, director of a 1977 production of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, said exultantly. And that's how I got sucked into theater for a good 15 years.

In 2007 the 50th anniversary revival of the Broadway production of West Side Story began an international tour covering the US, the UK and Europe. Three years later Yvette Kang of Yvents! persuaded the New York touring company to stage an 11-day run in KL's Istana Budaya - the only Southeast Asian stopover, apparently. Quite a feat, as the 70-member cast, crew and musicians are a logistical nightmare to move around - not to mention the expense. For the KL performances, about half the orchestra was recruited locally and they did a superb job under the magical baton of the musical director (whose name I would like to know, he was simply brilliant).


Jerome Robbins's incredibly demanding choreography makes such a powerful impression it can't be altered without destroying the essence of West Side Story. That Robbins was an obsessive perfectionist is revealed in the fact that he was fired halfway through the making of the film - because he was causing serious budget overruns with his extended dance rehearsals and holding up the shooting schedule.


With Google and YouTube, a great deal of information is now available online that will provide a fascinating glimpse of the complex and laborious process by which West Side Story evolved, over a span of eight hiccupy years.
I found the official West Side Story homepage a bit bland, apart from a welcome message from Jamie Bernstein Thomas, Lenny's daughter, who says she was only 10 when West Side Story was turned into a hit movie. However, there's a great deal of interesting data to be gleaned from this site dedicated to the movie version.

2007 rehearsal with members of the original Broadway cast
Leonard Bernstein rehearsing "A Boy Like That/I Have A Love"
Recording session for "Quintet," "Jet Song" and "Cool"
Recording "America" in the studio
José Carreras has some problems with "Maria"
All-star recording session for "Gee, Officer Krupke"
Behind the scenes with the cast of West Side Story in Malaysia
Postscript: I hear quite a few ministers - including Muhyiddin and Ng Yen Yen - were present at the gala premiere. Even the BN crowd will agree, I think, that it's far superior to stage truly magnificent shows like West Side Story - rather than banal, mediocre and malevolent shadow plays like Saiful Bukhari's Back Side Story.
[First posted 26 May 2010]