At Carnegie, “West Side Story” Will Be Told Faithfully

Brian Robertson, William White and Jay Goodlett know the secret to a great West Side Story: Tell the story. Faithfully.

 

Robertson (director), White (musical director), and Goodlett (choreographer) are the highly respected members of the creative team for The Carnegie’s production, playing weekends Jan. 9-17. 

 

The brilliant concept for one of the best musicals from Broadway’s Golden Age sets Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the mean streets of Manhattan in the fifties, with the lovers as members of rival street gangs. Like the play, things go tragically awry.

 

What the Carnegie trio want to do is bring the musical back to the gritty intensity of the original Broadway production, even if it is presented in miniature. While there will be a smaller cast (22 actors) and orchestra (14 musicians), Robertson, who directed The Carnegie’s concert stagings of Camelot and The Sound of Music, says with a 

 

It’s a musical propelled by dance and, Robertson says, while West Side Story can be made to fit The Carnegie’s small stage, “we still need to make the show work.” 

 

White, currently in his third season as Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, loves the show. “Leonard Bernstein is my idol. I’m a composer as well as a conductor. West Side Story is the first major work I conducted, when I was 18. I never get tired of it.”

 

He points out, “You can listen to the Symphonic Dances (a suite of orchestral music from the show) and know everything that happens.”

 

That’s a story. 

 

One of White’s priorities will be having the orchestra serving the musical’s singers and dancers, in one of Broadway’s greatest scores, which starts with the hard-charging Jets Song and continues through what are now standards including Somewhere and Maria. 

 

The singers are led by Marcus Shields (earning a master’s degree with CCM Opera) as Tony and Abigail Paschke as Maria. (Her many credits include starring in The Sound of Music last year for The Carnegie).

 

Goodlett was a longtime dancer with Cincinnati Ballet and is now an associate artistic director of Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati and an adjunct at Northern Kentucky University.  He will base his choreography in character, telling the story of two gangs who are “kids trying to own a piece of the street. All they have is turf.” 

 

West Side Story, Goodlett observes, “can be too dance-y. These are teenagers trying to express themselves.” In the time and place where West Side Story is set, that means physical contact, sometimes explosive. Robertson adds, “These kids aren’t cerebral.” 

 

It’s Robertson’s job to bring all the elements together. A longtime director in the region and beyond, he’s a faculty member at NKU and recently wrote and staged Carmen Redux for a Cincinnati Opera tour of schools and community centers.  

 

He plans to make West Side Story real by also taking a hard look at character. One example: Tony may be the romantic lead, but he’s also the former leader of the Jets and still lives in the neighborhood. He’s barely a step removed.