CREATIVE director Steve Tearle first saw West Side Story at the age of nine. Within two years he was performing in The Sound Of Music at the Sunderland Empire, whereupon a life-long love of musical theatre was born.
Yet he desisted from directing Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s 1950s’ musical. “I was always comparing what I could achieve with that amazing film,” he says, but then he attended a Broadway production in 2019 that changed his mind.
Here comes his different take, “not as ‘dancey’, not as polished, but very raw, very emotional, focusing on the acting”. In a nutshell, NETheatre York’s production would be built more on movement than choreography, although Melisa Boyd is still credited as choreographer, rather than movement director, working in tandem with Tearle.
After Rebecca Jackson’s Maria and Finlay Butler’s Tony cross without noticing each other in a sliding doors moment, the physical performance style is established in a long sequence without dialogue that opens the over-long first act, distilling the chaos and friction between two Upper West Side working-class gangs in New York: the Polish-Irish Catholics, The Jets, and their Puerta Rican rivals, The Sharks.
All are wearing variations on black and white streetwear, as sharp as in the era of 2Tone Ska, but here designed to be timeless, representing all eras from the 1950s to the present day to emphasise the continuing resonance of a tragic teenage romance rooted in Shakespeare’s ill-fated, star-crossed tale of forbidden love, Romeo & Juliet.
The black-and-white uniformity is also designed to reinforce common humanity beneath the codes of a turf war, here delineated by The Jets moving in a jive style, The Sharks more fluid in their stride.
Black and white defines Tearle’s set design and lighting too: even the three mobile scaffolding towers that facilitate much climbing and clambering, not least for Maria and Tony’s balcony scenes, are decorated that way, matched by the bold-typed projections that chart the story’s calamitous rush from 5.34pm on Friday evening to 2.31am on Sunday morning on a countdown clock. The New York skyline is depicted in monochrome too.
Tearle only breaks the night with colour – to borrow a Richard Ashcroft song title – in moments of heightened drama or tragedy, first used when Maia Beatrice’s Anita decorates Maria’s new dress with a red band, echoing the red coat in Steven Spielberg’s otherwise B&W Schindler’s List. Later, the columns of bright white light will turn bloodshed-red.
If a musical is built on a triptych of music, story and choreography, Tearle’s production is stronger on its musicality and storytelling than movement: the ensemble motion in commotion needs more zip, more dynamism, more attack and anger, more heat too, although Riff and The Jets finger-click into the right gear in Cool.
Tearle’s “focus on the acting, the characterisation” pays off, however, in the heart-stopping performances of Jackson’s Maria and Butler’s Tony. From Puerto Rican accent to beautiful singing voice and deportment, Jackson is a terrific young talent, one to watch, leading I Feel Pretty so delightedly and delightfully. Butler, lithe and full of stage presence, sings movingly too, especially in Maria.
Kristian Barley’s Bernardo and Kit Stroud’s kilted Riff exude macho menace as hot-headed rival gang leaders, ever ready for a rumble, Scott Barnes amuses in a camp cameo as gym party chaperone Mr Glad Hand and Erik Jensen’s Lieutenant Schrank is suitably no-nonsense.
Beatrice’s abrasive Anita and Jackson’s Maria combine in the show’s outstanding number, A Boy Like That/I Have A Love, while Tearle’s Jewish drug store boss Doc – the older, outsider voice of reason, bewilderment and despair – takes over the singing of Somewhere (a song originally given to Consuelo on Broadway), giving it added adult heft.
Look out too for Melissa Boyd’s volatile Rosalia, Alice Atang’s athletic Natalia, Zachary Pickersgill’s plucky Snowboy and Erin Greenley’s tomboy Anybodys, along with Steve Perry’s vengeful Chino.
Defining West Side Story as “a play with music, rather than as a music”, Tearle has followed up a similarly focused Fiddler On The Roof by “stripping back” his latest production, restricting the cast to 35, keeping the stage pretty much bare, save for the scaffolding towers, a neon sign for Doc’s store, eight chairs and a bed. The lighting ups its game, a dazzling component in capturing the moments of conflict and conflagration.
Not all the blocking works well, the tinsel curtain cutting off heads in one scene, and the movement is sometimes heavy footed, but we are seeing a new, character-driven side to Tearle’s direction this year, more grit, less glitter. Coming next: Elf The Musical, from November 26 to 30, when the (Christmas) glitter will no doubt resurface!
NE Theatre York in West Side Story, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, 2.30pm and 7.30pm today. Box office: 01904 501935 or josephrownteetheatre.co.uk.