West Side Story at the Guthrie

This afternoon we went to see the production of West Side Story at the Guthrie Theater. The Guthrie is Minnesota's big deal of a theater, and we generally expect a strong production there. We weren't disappointed by the production, but perhaps a bit by the play.

^{Guthrie Theater press kit photo by T. Charles Erickson. This was the only press kit photo with Leah Anderson in it (standing center right) which is a damn shame.}

There was a definite high point, however, and that was Leah Anderson's performance as Anybodys. Anybodys is already basically the reason to see West Side Story, and Anderson put in a stellar version of that role.

Anybodys is a girl who desperately wants to be a part of the Jets street gang, and is initially rejected because of her gender. She's a very minor character at the beginning of the show, who grows into one of the most significant secondary characters by the end.

One of the things about watching this show this year is that there's a huge difference in emotional range available between playing a tomboy in 1957 and playing a gender-nonconforming role in 2018, and Anderson really nailed that. Anbodys has the most satisfying and devastation emotional arc of the play, as she tries so desperately to be accepted as part of the Jets, and when she finally is, she immediately has to betray them for higher moral reasons, and face the fact that the group that she's based so much of her identity on becoming a part of is maybe not the thing she hoped it was, and not the thing she necessarily wants to be a part of.

It's a coming-of-age story that's maybe not told as much as it should be, given how regularly it happens in reality. Anderson's handling of the emotional range necessary is powerful and affecting.

^{Guthrie Theater press kit photo by T. Charles Erickson}

The leads are not as strong, but I think that's more a function of the play and the directorial choices than a reflection on the actors. Marc Koeck's Tony was clearly cast to be a stereotypical leading man, and he played it so strongly that way that it almost felt like a parody. Koeck looks, talks, and moves like Buzz Lightyear, which seems like it was what they wanted, but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable in this context. He would be great as Curtis in the live-action Porco Rosso remake that I would desperately like to see.

Most of this production's flaws are the fundamental ones of West Side Story, and many of West Side Story's flaws are taken directly from Romeo and Juliet. The three sides of the main plot really don't have enough depth to them to be particularly emotionally effective, and at times the characters behave more like devices to move the plot along than actual people.

Ana Isabelle does a great job as Anita, but the play ends before her character has to deal with the things that have happened to her or the things that she's done. Darius Jordan Lee and Marco Antonio Santiago are excellent as the gang leaders Riff and Bernardo, but they really only get to be hyper-aggressive and then dead.

That's my main regret, is I didn't feel like the actors were given as much to work with as they could have excelled at. West Side Story may be a classic but it's not especially good. Anderson was able to take her character somewhere really worthwhile and powerful, and I feel like many of the other actors were capable of doing the same but overly limited by their parts.

I feel like in general we can tell a great play by what it enables great actors to do, and West Side Story, at least in this direction, did that only for a single role.