If you don’t have a Tony and Maria, you don’t have a West Side Story. This CTORA production has both — in spades. And a lot more. Although it’s semi-professional, under the direction of Chris Adams, this is a startlingly strong mounting of one of the most breathtaking musicals in the canon.
If you’re not familiar with the plot, it’s inspired by Romeo and Juliet, but it’s set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the fifties, and the warring families are street gangs. Tony is a founding member of the whiter-than-white Jets. The newer arrivals, the Puerto Rican Sharks, are led by Maria’s brother Bernardo.
In Act 1 especially, the knockout songs just keep coming, wrapped in a dizzying score by Leonard Bernstein and ornamented by Stephen Sondheim’s sparkling lyrics. Because the idea for West Side Story was conceived by Jerome Robbins, who also directed and choreographed the original production, it’s a major dancing show. Robbins’s style has been endlessly parodied — especially the jazz ballets he built for the toughs — but they were hugely influential, and, when they’re performed well, I find them moving: Robbins brings such contained elegance to the throbbing energy of the streets. For this production, choreographer Suzanne Ouellette has wisely retained Robbins’s iconic moves, and the tightly rehearsed company knows how to deliver them.
But I started by talking about Tony and Maria. Both roles require operatic vocal ranges and, as written, Tony is such a bland goody-goody that he’s very difficult to bring to life: I’ve seen a lot of productions of West Side Story, and I could count on one hand the number of actors who’ve pulled the role off — and have fingers left over. But Sayer Roberts is so good as Tony that he almost made me forget this.
Vocally strong throughout his range, Roberts floats Tony’s high notes effortlessly. His tone is velvety and, when he opens it up — in “Something’s Coming”, for instance (“AROOOUND the corner!”), there’s a freedom, a thrillingly confident abandon, I’ve never heard from any other Tony.
This abandon also informs Roberts’s acting choices. As written, Tony hasn’t been blessed with a lot of nuance: he’s basically just in love and he repeats himself. But Roberts brings a sense of discovery that endows the part with fresh humanity. In “Maria”, Tony mostly just says his new girlfriend’s name over and over, but, with Roberts, it’s like he’s so dumfounded by the depth of his love that saying her name is like discovering language for the first time.
And I’ve never seen a Maria like the one Cassandra Consiglio delivers: she has a sense of humour! In “I Feel Pretty” she too is startled by the transformative power of love. She can’t believe how good she looks to herself all of a sudden, and she knows she’s being ridiculous, so she sends herself up, but she’s also having the best time. Maria is often played with fragile femininity, but Consiglio is having none of that and it’s bracing.
She doesn’t really get to release her soprano until “Balcony Scene”, well into the first act, but, when she does, it’s crystalline.
While I’m wetting my pants over the performers, let me also sing the praises of Josh Graetz, a newcomer to Vancouver who’s playing Tony’s best friend Riff. Graetz starts the evening off right as the first featured performer, in “Jet Song”: he can sing, he can dance. And, as the evening progresses, his characterization of Riff is a fully human version of fifties cool.
I also need to mention Vicente Sandoval, who brings an unusual, but credible and helpful butchness to Bernardo.
The lead performance I haven’t mentioned yet is Nicole Laurent’s Anita. I don’t mean to knock her work but, in the vocal company of Roberts and Consiglio, she doesn’t shine as brightly. That said, her acting performance fires, after the inevitable deaths, for instance, and that’s crucial.
Musicals that are also tragedies tend to have a tougher time in the second act and that’s true here to some extent. My take is that director Adams lets the final couple of scenes get too sentimental: more restraint would probably be more moving. And he screws up the staging of the comic “Officer Krupke” in a couple of ways. Although it should be tight, he spreads it all over the stage, and the Jet who’s impersonating Krupke keeps singing the gang members’ lyrics, which is confusing: why isn’t he fully in character as the cop? But there’s a challenge built into the musical as well: the delirious joy of Act 1 slides into the machinations of an increasingly dark plot. I don’t want to overstate this; Act 2 still held me.
Itai Erdal’s lighting design features an insane number of very dramatic cues, which is energizing and a great match for the material.
I have some quibbles about Brian Ball’s costume design. In the quintet “I Feel Pretty”, one of the other young women is wearing a virtual replica of Maria’s pink floral dress, for instance, and the other three performers share a darker floral theme. Within a generally more successful design, that moment feels lazy. But Ball’s West Side set is handsome and functional.
I left the theatre a happy man. This production is a huge accomplishment.
WEST SIDE STORY Book by Arthur Laurents Music by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Directed by Chris Adams. A CTORA Theater production. At the Granville Island Stage until May 24. (Tickets and information)
PHOTO CREDIT: (Sayer Roberts and Casandra Consiglio in a photo by Canna Zhou)
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