This is becoming a habit, but I'm not complaining. Kari and I went to West Side Story tonight. It was playing at the Pavilion and we both wanted to see it. She gets season tickets so she invited me along.
This one is a bit of the opposite from Les Miz. I think I actually prefer the movie version of this one. The acting was good, but the staging and choreography was weird. There were times it I wondered if the choreographer was getting paid by the step, and at other times if she/he had just run out of ideas because the actors just stood there.
Example of the latter - During "Something's comin'", the actor playing Tony stood at the front of the stage, a single spotlight on him and just stood there singing. Don't get me wrong, he sang well, but if I was Tony and I was anticipating something exciting happening, I might be doing more than just standing still. But that's just me.
Lighting was okay, but a couple times it was abrasive. At the end of the song I just mentioned, they had wheeled in the "balcony" with Maria standing on it. All of a sudden the spot was BAM! on her and it was so striking that it didn't feel right. Had they eased into it, it would have made more sense.
The other thing I didn't quite understand, and maybe it was just a movie thing or lack of understanding on my part (both theatrically as well as the language barrier) - often the Latinos would slip into Spanish - in the middle of a song or dialogue for several lines, leaving me, the listener, to piecemeal what was being said.
Other than all that, it was a pretty good play, just not my favorite.
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