‘West Side Story’: The story, you’d recognize; the music — maybe not

By Joe Brown

Monday, July 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

I cannot in good conscience recommend the Super Summer Theatre’s staging of “West Side Story” at Spring Mountain Ranch, even as an excuse to wiggle your bare toes in the damp grass and enjoy the cool breezes and starlight and snacks at 1950s prices.

There is famously a big rumble at the center of the genre-revolutionizing 1957 Broadway musical, and in this outdoor rendition, there are few survivors. Casualties include composer Leonard Bernstein; lyricist Stephen Sondheim is in critical condition. Original director/choreographer Jerome Robbins limps away nearly unscathed. Characters who escape the carnage include Maria, Anita, Riff and Bernardo. Sadly, good-guy Tony is DOA.

As Maria says when her hesitant suitor Chino returns from the fatal gang fight to deliver some very bad news, “It will be easier if you say it very fast.”

So I won’t belabor this review.

The real rumble onstage should be between the singers and the musicians. Some of Bernstein’s most beautiful melodies — most egregiously the gorgeous duet “One Hand, One Heart” — were rendered nearly unrecognizable at Thursday’s opening performance by an overloud, unbalanced eight-piece ensemble, dominated by cheesy synth-strings and blatting horns.

These songs are so familiar, almost American folk songs by now, yet they often sounded like they were being reinterpreted by Philip Glass, or by an edgy, Eastern European avant-garde electro-jazz combo. If the band was doing this on purpose, I might applaud them. But no.

This is about as conservative a staging as this musical is going to get. Producing director Terrence R. Williams capably keeps the story and characters straight and choreographer Evan Litt comes up with a creditable evocation of Robbins’ exuberantly athletic and expressive dances. The show comes to life in the ensemble dances: “Jet Song,” the competitive dance at the gym, the balletic battle of the rumble and the bitterly comic slapstick of “Gee, Officer Krupke.”

Among the hardworking 30-person cast, Jennifer De La Torre is a standout as Anita, sassily tart-tongued and a terrific dancer. Janay Bombino makes a sweet-voiced Maria, trilling innocently like a Disney princess.

As Tony, Eddie Gelhaus is miscast, singing with a limited, goaty quaver that doesn’t suit the yearning tone of “Something’s Coming” and “Maria.” Litt, the choreographer, who plays hotheaded gang member Riff, might have been a better choice.

The musical is staged without intermission, which makes for a long-seeming evening. Fortunately, there is plenty of natural diversion at Spring Mountain Ranch: I could look up at the starry sky and watch the progress of the nearly full moon hanging low.

But I could still hear.