How West Side Story Taught Broadway How to Rumble
Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, March 2020
THE FIRST PEOPLE we meet after the curtain goes up on Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story are the members of a street gang called the Jets, a name that doesn't sound all that menacing. They sing about how bonded they are ("You're never disconnected!"), how they are not to be trifled with, certainly not by their rivals the Sharks. 'The Jet Song' introduces these kids as cocky — they always walk tall! they're the swingingest thing! — but oddly self-censoring. "The whole buggin' street"? Is that a way to describe your precious turf that needs to keep out the encroaching Puerto Rican menace?
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