Not unlike young people today, “West Side Story’s” members of rival teenage street gangs Jets and Sharks feel angry, displaced and itching to strike out at their perceived enemies.
A story as old as, yes, “Romeo and Juliet.”
So although there’s really nothing new about the story line in Hillbarn Theatre’s current production of the Arthur Laurents-Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim socko-1957 Broadway hit “West Side Story,” there are some small pleasures and a splendiferous voice to appreciate in the tiny package of delightful Ana Paula Malagon as Maria. As one admiring audience member marveled at intermission, “Boy, has she got a great set of pipes!”
There’s another special reason to see this show, which only runs through Sept. 16. Malagon and her Tony, charismatic, handsome Jeffrey Brian Adams, make the audience really, REALLY believe that they are in love. That’s called authentic acting, and it’s a rarity.
Then there are the well-choreographed dance numbers — sometimes with as many as 18 or 20 performers who all leap, twirl and sway on the smallish Hillbarn stage area. Occasionally Kim Harvath’s choreography has a few clichéd movements, and the ballet sequence is rather lackluster, but when those graceful Jets and Sharks and their vivacious dolls (all dripping with loads of makeup, flashy dresses and layers of billowing crinolines) let loose, it’s sheer bliss.
No one epitomizes the pouty, sultry, fiery Puerto Rican moll better than Danielle Philapil as Maria’s brother Bernardo’s girlfriend, Anita. Philapil is deliciously devastating whenever she withers an adversary with an arched eyebrow, a sassy retort and a dismissive shake of her curvy figure.
Both Josiah Frampton as Jets leader Riff and Jorge Diaz as his Sharks counterpart, Bernardo, bring a level of street cred to their roles, and both are surprisingly lithe dancers, especially Frampton, who might have some ballet training in his background.
Two young performers also stand out even in a cast of mostly adults: Tousle-haired Luke Arnold as A-Rab, one of the Jets, and red-haired, pigtailed pipsqueak Katie Maupin as the tomboy Anybodys, who has a secret hideout where she becomes privy to lots of gang secrets.
It’s unfortunate that a couple of veteran actors overact and mug their way through their scenes, especially Marty Lee Jones as Lt. Shrank, as well as Shawn Bender as his rather nondescript sidekick Office Krupke.
Erica Wyman Abrahamson’s efficient direction keeps the story moving along at warp speed, and although there are multiple scene changes, they, too, are very quick.
Of course, “West Side Story” is nothing without Bernstein’s incredible musical score, and music director Rick Reynolds does his best with a medium-sized orchestra, augmenting it with synthesizer keyboard riffs and some recorded passages. A shoutout goes to Michael Veizades for his drumming (especially in “Cool” where the dancers snap their fingers in juxtaposition to the drummer’s beats), which adds a needed vibrancy to several songs.
Kudos also to fight choreographer Zoe Swenson-Graham, who was able to make the street fights – even when knives were used – look genuine and frightening.
Ting Na Wang created a background setting that is dark and foreboding, with a metal second story and ladder steps for all the climbing, jumping and leaping, an accessible balcony to Maria’s bedroom window plus the exterior of Doc’s Drugstore. Later, when the drugstore opens and the Jets and their girlfriends go there to flirt, drink Coke and dance, the stage lights up. In fact, most of the scenes happen right there — or outside on the street in front of the drugstore.
So many of the songs transcend generations, ethnicities, social strata and gender because they are timeless and indelible: There’s Tony’s joyful, love-filled “Maria” with the smitten Tony singing, twirling and jumping with glee; the energetic, optimistic “Tonight,” sung with anticipation by so many of the leads as well as by the rival gangs; Maria’s ecstatic paean to budding love, “I Feel Pretty;” the hauntingly beautiful “Somewhere” sung from high above by clear-voiced soloist Danielle Cheiken, and, finally, the sad, resolute duet between Maria and Anita as they share their love-filled grief in “I Have a Love.”
Too bad no one writes songs like those anymore.
Raven Winter does a top-drawer job of creating hairstyles and wigs that befit young Italians and Puerto Ricans in the 1950s, and both Grant Huberty’s sound and Pamela Gray’s lighting work well.
So just sit back, savor the incomparable lyrics and songs, the dexterous dancing, the lovely voices and mostly solid acting. As Sondheim reminded the world light years ago, “When love comes so strong, there is no right or wrong. Your love is…..your love.”
A poignant message for us all in the fractured world we live in today.
Mail Joanne Engelhardt at joanneengelhardt@comcast.net.
Theater review
What: “West Side Story”
Where: Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 East Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City
When: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m.
Through: Sept. 16
Tickets: $35-52, (650) 349-6411 or www.hillbarntheatre.org
