Originally a musical by Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) and Leonard Bernstein (music), the 1961 film starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakaris and Tucker Smith went on to win ten Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture. The spoken words and vocal tracks were preserved on the film, whilst the orchestra provided all the accompaniment. Interestingly all of Natalie Wood's songs were dubbed by Marni Nixon, as were some of the songs by Rita Moreno.
The 'new' Hamer Hall is visually stunning, with a warm orange and ochre theme and wooden-backed seats with orange velvet cushioning. Cylindrical pendulum lights hang from the ceiling like tongues of flame. They reminded me of large luminous 'lava lamps' with shiny metallic tips.
The size of the orchestra was also visually impressive, virtually filling the whole stage, with a big and bold brass and percussion presence and oh so lush strings. There was also a harp used in places in the score. The music itself is confident, colourful and sassy and there is liberal use of a latin beat.
It is an amazing exercise in logistics to pull off a coordinated enterprise of this nature, and the conductor had a video screen displaying the film in real time (which was regularly punctuated by coloured 'bar lines' - signficance unknown) in front of him in addition to the orchestral score.
I was immediately struck by the vivid and somewhat unnatural colourisation of the original film and the amount of make-up worn by the actors! The choreography by Jerome Robbins is simply brilliant and there is a lot of very sharp dancing and some wonderful fluffy and flouncy dance costumes for the female leads. Aside from the dark undertones of the clashing gangs and the inherent racial intolerance that spawned their differences, there is also a chilling element of police brutality and threats.
In this modern-day version of 'Romeo and Juliet', things do not end well for the young lovers (as in the traditional story). It caused me to think that over the fifty years since the film was made, sadly very little has changed in terms of all humanity managing to live together in peaceful coexistence. We are lucky here in Australia to have a relatively tolerant multi-cultural society, but there are certainly many other places in the world that are hotbeds of intolerance, whether in regard to gender or race or religious beliefs.
But I digress ... The orchestra was simply fabulous, and the combination of the film and the 'surround sound' swirling about you served to draw you into the story in a more intense way than sitting in a cinema.
The MSO, conductor and the no doubt large technical team are to be congratulated on a very successful outcome. I understand that the MSO now performs film scores 'live' several times a year, and based on this performance, this is something not to be missed if one of your favourite films is given the star treatment.
www.mso.com.au
More about "West Side Story": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Story
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