TWO RIVAL GANGS. A CITY IN TURMOIL. A DIRECTOR ON A MISSION. AS AN OLD CLASSIC IS REINVIGORATED FOR A NEW GENERATION, STEVEN SPIELBERG AND HIS TEAM TELL US HOW THEY’RE BRINGING A FRESH EDGE TO WEST SIDE STORY

WORDS IAN FREER

Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) and Officer Krupke (Brian d’Arcy James) keep the gangs in line.

PROGULUE

AS A CHILD, Steven Spielberg loved West Side Story. He knew every word of the Broadway show off by heart and would sing it endlessly over dinner, much to his family’s annoyance. But don’t imagine this longheld ardour means his new version will be a slavish facsimile of the original. Spielberg ’s adaptation is a celebration of the 1957 Leonard Bernstein (music)-Stephen Sondheim (lyrics)-Arthur Laurents (book) musical, but with a cutting-edge contemporary twist. “Our film is much more pointed toward a street musical than a stage musical,” he says. “I think it’s harder and a little more relatable.” prevalent than in the ‘Prologue’. As depicted on stage and in the 1961 Robert Wise-Jerome Robbins multi- Oscar-winning film, the opening stanza sets up the antipathy betweentwo gangs — the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks — in ’50s New York through light-hearted games of one-upmanship, expressed through dance. Spielberg ’s take continues this tradition, but filtered through the director’s unique sensibilities — after all, he has form directing sharks.

“The Prologue is a really great blend of lyrical movement and action sequences,” says choreographer Justin Peck.

One moment recalls a certain 1981 blockbuster. “One of the Sharks in the back of a pickup truck releases a bunch of watermelons that trip all of the Jets who are chasing him,” says newcomer Rachel Zegler, who plays pure-hearted protagonist Maria Vasquez. “I was, like, ‘This could totally be in Raiders Nowhere is this more Of The Lost Ark!’”

Yet Spielberg wanted to make the sequence work harder. “The Prologue needed to establish in no uncertain terms why the Sharks and the Jets go to war with each other,” he says. “What is the fuse that sets off the powderkeg? [Screenwriter] Tony Kushner came up with a very courageous idea, which is the Jets are on a mission to do something symbolic of their hatred for the Sharks. It is markedly different than anything that has been done for Broadway.”