West Side Story is a brilliant updating of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the two warring families of Verona now two streets gangs of kids from two different immigrant cultures coexisting in one New York City neighborhood. West Side Story demonstrates yet again the enduring quality of Shakespeare's work, how he explored personal desires and social structures so intrinsically human that we can still identify with his characters 400 years later and recognize how our reinvented society mirrors those of his plays. Young lovers Maria and Tony are caught in a storm of racial intolerance, family traditions, and street-gang rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks against the back drop of New York City's west side during the last days of summer, 1957. In this essay, I am going to examine how the creators of West Side Story ¡V Leonard Bernstein (composer), Arthur Laurents (Librettist) and Jerome Robbins (Director) made adaptations to it. In addition, I will discuss whether the theme of......
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Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |