Happy Fiftieth!

We ordinarily would have missed this entirely as it's well outside our regular Web surfing grounds (surfing grounds?). Happily, we picked up the link from a poster on one of the music forums in which we occasionally participate.

West Side Story at 50

Pauline Kael was the most respected film critic in America, but she had her off days. "I would guess that in a few decades," she wrote in 1963, "the dances in West Side Story will look as much like hilariously limited, dated period pieces as Busby Berkeley's 'Remember My Forgotten Man' number in Gold Diggers of 1933."

Guess again. West Side Story opened 50 years ago tonight - September 26th 1957 - at the Winter Garden on Broadway, and half-a-century on, when the Jets take off, in blue jeans and sneakers, thrusting up from the stage, arms stretching out to make their huge signature Ts in the air, audiences still thrill, in the theatre, at the ballet, and, pace Miss Kael, film and video audiences. West Side Story is the trick so many musicals since have never quite pulled off: great storytelling in American dance.

There then follows an authoritative, detailed, and fascinating piece that includes extended interviews with Hal Prince, the show's producer; Sid Ramin, one of the show's two orchestrators; and Arthur Laurents, the show's librettist (scriptwriter).

RTWT here.