Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

present tense. Obviously, the actors have to ask: why is my character doing this? What about asking, Why am I singing? Why am I dancing? Those questions are for the director even if the authors have or think they have answered it. With West Side Story, however, those questions were never asked—not by the director, not by the cast, not by the audience, not by the critics, not by anyone, because we never asked them. We were telling much of the story through dancing and singing; it was a natural way to us, consequently it was natural. We did spend an inordinate amount of time seeking a name to describe what we were doing before we settled on “lyric theatre”— not too pretentious (or too meaningful), used in early interviews and then forgotten by all except the Library of Congress. There's a comfort in having a label identifying what you're doing when what you're doing doesn't quite fit in any category. Once it's over and done, it no longer needs a label. At least, what we had done didn't need any label for me. For me, we had come closer than I had thought possible to what we had dreamed. Time to move on to the next whatever it would be in whatever form.

Even before I began actually writing the book of West Side Story, when I was making an outline to structure the story, and thus give us something concrete to work from, I described the prologue as being danced with three or four spoken words. What better way to set the style, to tell the audience this story was going to be told primarily through music and dance?

That style was influenced to some extent by the fact that the choreography was to be by Jerome Robbins. Similarly, preceding the murderous rumble that ends the first act with a quintet sung by the whole company was influenced to a great extent because the music was to be by Leonard Bernstein. Lenny and Jerry were two of the most remarkable musical-theatre talents of that time, of any time. How could that not affect the style of the show?

Many say West Side forever changed the American musical—a claim made these days by shows like Rent and Spring Awakening with no visible proof—because of its use of dance and music. To me, it used those elements better than they had ever been used before; but what it really changed, what its real contribution to American musical theatre was, was that it showed that any subject—murder, attempted rape, bigotry—could be the subject of a popular musical.

Because of the conscious emphasis on music and dance, West Side had the shortest book of any musical to date. I became adept at providing the briefest of lead-ins to a song or number. In the second act, for example, Anita knocks on the door to the bedroom where Tony and Maria have just made love. Tony slips out the window; Maria opens the door. Anita comes in and looks at the bed. Maria says:

“All right! Now you know!”

Anita says: “And you still don't know! Tony is one of them!”— and sings, “A boy like that who'd kill your brother!”

Two lines and we're into a searing, climactic duet. Not bad, and helpful to the show, but a technical proficiency traceable to my beginnings in radio, where I learned economy in dialogue. What came just as easily but meant more to the show and was more gratifying to me was the obstacle that kept Tony from getting the crucial message about Maria. Instead of a delayed messenger as in Shakespeare, it was bigotry—a basic theme of the show. In Shakespeare's native country, that change received a great deal of attention; in this country, it went unnoticed. It provided the show's last use of music—the underscoring of the attempted gang rape.

Oddly enough for a show that relies so much on song and dance, there is neither in the last half of the second act. That was not intended. A long speech Maria has just before the end, I wrote as a dummy lyric for a final aria. Why no aria? Unfortunately, Lenny never found music that pleased him. To this day, Maria delivers that dummy lyric as an impassioned speech. So “masterpieces” are created.

Because of my belief that West Side Story should be done as it was done originally, I had no interest in directing any production. In 1980, there was a none-too-successful revival mastered by Jerry that didn't change my mind—it largely replicated the original, but it was bland. Yet in 1998, I redirected an English touring company headed for London. Why? Enter Freddie Gershon.

Freddie is MTI—Music Theatre International, the best company to handle subsidiary rights to musicals all over this country, Europe, Japan, South Africa, tomorrow the world. Freddie loves musical theatre and has made a life interest of bringing musical theatre to high-school kids, and vice versa. Following journalistic practice, I disclose that Freddie and his wife, Myrna, the high priestess of originality, can be counted among the best friends Tom and I ever had. MTI is still the leader in its field. But back to the English touring company.

It wanted to play London. A member of one of the estates in control of the rights to West Side saw the production and judged it ready. One of Freddie's people reported otherwise. Freddie, knowing I was going to be in England, suggested I see the touring company fast. I did—in Southampton—and put the transfer to London on hold. When I came home, I phoned Jerry: two weeks with Jerome Robbins, I reported, could make the company worthy of the transfer. Jerry was sick, much sicker than I suspected, too sick to direct. He asked if I would take over for him. That surprised me. Equally surprising, I agreed. Why all the surprise? Our personal relationship had been nonexistent for years.

We had met and become good friends during World War II— yes, that far back, and