Playing Tony, Maria in 'West Side Story' is cool for LI, Broadway actors
As a little girl growing up in East Meadow, Katie Ferretti was a huge fan of the iconic American musical “West Side Story.” The heart-rending tale of Tony and Maria, an inner-city Romeo and Juliet doomed to meet cute, fall hard, then careen toward disaster, has captivated audiences since its Broadway debut in 1957. Ferretti had seen the 1961 film version, and would run around her house with a red scarf tied around her waist, simulating the dress worn by the film’s star Natalie Wood.
Like many a young singer, Ferretti dreamed of playing Maria, and got her chance in 2016, starring in a production at the CM Performing Arts Center in Oakdale.
“It’s a forbidden love story that’s lasted literally centuries, and still holds true today,” says the actress, now married in Wantagh with a 3-month-old baby. “There’d be times I’d be waiting in the wings thinking, how many people have been in the wings just like this, waiting for this cue?”
Today, backstage at Manhattan’s Broadway Theatre, Shereen Pimentel — a senior at Juilliard, juggling rehearsals, performances and her last semester of classes — is the next in a long line of Marias awaiting her cue, opposite Isaac Powell, her Tony, in the controversial revival of “West Side Story,” which opens Thursday at the Broadway Theatre.
This is a leaner, grittier, more millennial-friendly “West Side,” set in the present day, with a massive video-screen backdrop and cell-phone-toting gang members from a rainbow of ethnicities. But anyone who’s played Tony and Maria knows that they bear the weight of this enterprise. If audiences don’t buy into their chemistry and full-throttle love at first sight, no amount of flashy staging can make up for that.
No pressure, right, guys?
Stay cool, boy
Faith Ahmed and Eric Schell starred as Maria and Tony in "West Side Story" at Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts in 2014. Credit: Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts
This new “West Side Story,” from Belgian “bad boy” director Ivo van Hove, has been generating buzz for months, ever since key changes were announced. (Musical numbers like Maria’s “I Feel Pretty” and the “Somewhere” ballet, along with the intermission and Jerome Robbins’ original, acclaimed choreography, have all been scrapped in favor of a faster-paced, one-act tale with gang members busting moves by Belgian postmodernist Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.)
This has left some fans, well, skeptical.
"It’s a masterpiece of musical theater,” says actress (and Huntington native) Samantha Williams, who’s played Maria twice. “So I’m not sure. I’ll have to see it to decide.”
The show was the creation of a musical-theater dream team, headed by director-choreographer Robbins, with a soaring score by Leonard Bernstein, biting lyrics from a young Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents that dared to raise the specter of racism and gang violence in a Broadway musical. (It won two Tony Awards, but lost the coveted best musical trophy to the cozier, old-timey charmer “The Music Man.”)
“Audiences went to theater to escape, and here they were faced with problems that I’m assuming most wanted to ignore,” says Rocky Point-raised actor Eric Schell, 23, who has played Tony in two regional productions.
Looking back, another Tony — Greenport’s Matthew Drinkwater, 22 — laughs at how naive he was when he starred in a local teen version at age 16. “I remember discussing the racial themes with my parents, telling them, ‘I honestly don’t think kids feel that way anymore,’ ” Drinkwater recalls. “I never realized I was in that same mental space as Tony … blissfully ignorant.”
A show for the ages
For actors and musicians, performing this show can feel like a rite of passage, which may be why so many feel such fondness for it.
“Maria was definitely my dream role,” says St. James’ Nicole D’Amore, 23. “It was the first Broadway show I saw, and when my high school held auditions, I was practicing, practicing — and didn’t get the part. I was devastated.” (No fear — she’d get her shot months later.)
What stunned 1950s audiences — A Polish-American guy falling for a Puerto Rican girl? Frank discussions of youth, sexuality, and what it means to be American? — is what continues to fuel interest in the show decades later. In fact, it may be more relevant today given Americans’ chronic tribalism and craving for emotionally charged conflict. This may be why directors and producers are taking another look at the classic. Besides van Hove’s new take, there's Steven Spielberg’s eagerly anticipated film remake coming in December that stars “Baby Driver’s” Ansel Elgort as Tony and newcomer Rachel Zegler as Maria.
“I think everybody can relate to this story,” says Ferretti, who stars in CM’s upcoming “Holiday Inn." “Maybe a relative is going to marry someone outside their race. Or in my experience — my coming out as the first gay person in my family. It wasn’t as dramatic as Romeo and Juliet. No relative was going to be killed over it. But that’s why this show still lasts and why it still packs a punch.”
WHAT "West Side Story"
WHERE The Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway
INFO $39-$229; 212-239-6200, telecharge.com
What it takes to play a boy (and girl) like that in 'West Side Story'
Since "West Side Story" is about bridging gaps — both ethnic and generational — it seems fitting to bridge a geographical divide of our own, asking local actors what they’d ask the current stars if they could. We caught up with the actors playing Tony and Maria in the new Broadway production — Isaac Powell, 25, who grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Shereen Pimentel, 21, from Teaneck, New Jersey — who agreed to hang out in Powell’s dressing room recently before a performance to field questions submitted by their fellow Tonys and Marias.
Samantha Williams, a Huntington native and two-time Maria, who starred in the 2015 production at Northport’s John W. Engeman Theater: "I was hired to do 10 weeks — I’d never done anything that long and was terrified. Shereen, I'd love to know your vocal journey, and what’s your favorite song in the show?"
Pimentel: I started singing when I was 8, and in high school I attended Juilliard’s pre-college program, which broadened my idea of what singing could be, that it was possible for me to do musical theater and classical. My favorite musical moment is the “Tonight Quintet.” To have the orchestra behind us, so full, and almost the entire company onstage singing is just really, really exciting.
Matthew Drinkwater, who beat out his twin brother for the role of Tony in a 2014 Kids for Kids Production in Oakdale: "How do you find ways to surprise yourself onstage, especially in such an iconic show?"
Powell: By tricking yourself into not knowing what’s happening next. How do I put it? Not trying to captain the ship. Just go on the journey, and leave yourself open to new impulses. Inevitably new things do happen. It’s also about forgiving myself when I feel I fall short.
Eric Schell, who played Riff as a sophomore at Rocky Point High School, then Tony twice in regional shows, including Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts in 2014: "I saw your production and you both seem so grounded and dropped in to your characters. What do you do before or during the show for that to happen?"
Powell: It happens long before the show. It’s about dropping into yourself as a human being ... laying a strong foundation in rehearsals, so you feel both feet planted under you once you’re onstage.
Pimentel: If I’m kind of out of it, it’s about physically grounding my body. Sometimes lying on the floor for a second [in my dressing room] and feeling what the ground feels like, so I remember it’s there. Because once the show takes off it doesn’t stop.
Nicole D'Amore, a registered nurse in St. James, who played Maria at 17 opposite Drinkwater in Kids for Kids’ 2014 show: "What’s different about your version compared to the original Broadway or film productions?"
Pimentel: Every single character is someone you could see on the streets right now.
Powell: It’s “West Side Story’” as if it was written last week. [Audience expectations] made us dig a little bit deeper, and put our blinders up a little bit higher, so we could really focus on the task at hand. If you take a property as beloved as this, there’s bound to be some heat, some backlash.
Pimentel: You can ruffle someone’s feathers with anything. As a company, we came in with an open mind, wanting to explore, and that’s kind of what we ask of our audiences every night — to see it through our lens. To come in and just experience this show in a new way.
— JOSEPH V. AMODIO
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