In the past two weeks, I finished the His Dark Materials trilogy. And I loved it.

I also recently read The History Boys, the play, by Alan Bennett. And I also loved it. I partially feel like History boys doesn’t completely count, but since I was analyzing it as well and read through it at least three times… maybe?

I also read the play Metamorphosis. It was rather wonderful.

I didn’t finish reading as many books this summer as I wanted to, but after reading His Dark Materials I’ve found that my reading pace has picked back up and hopefully that will help me out this year in college. I’m almost done reading Mainly On Directing by Arthur Laurents, and have just begun a book about The History Boys (since I’m going to try to direct it.)

Let’s be honest, West Side Story isn’t about the storyline or dialogue, which is often hokey at worst, passable at best. It’s always been about two things: the music and the dancing.

West Side Story probably has the best score of any musical in history (and is probably the only musical where I’d actually rather listen to the gorgeous orchestrations than the singing). That’s not to say the singing must only be passable, but it can work without the best voices, especially if the dancing is great.

Unfortunately, the dancing isn’t really that strong. I understand they’re in a tough spot as West Side Story’s choreography is so iconic (is there any other show that a large chunk of the public could recognize just from the choreography?), but some of it is a bit sloppy. It needed major tightening

But I (not really being into dancing) could have looked past that if the singing was stellar. It wasn’t, and I blame it mainly on the casting. Matt Cavenaugh as Tony and Josefina Scaglione as Maria weren’t bad per se, but they really were fairly weak for the most of the time. It never really felt like they meant it. Karen Olivo (of In the Heights fame) as Anita was definitely the stand-out; she was a firecracker.

Arthur Laurents made a big fuss about really making these characters and situations feel real, make it much grittier and the gangs more dangerous. The only thing he really did was make the decision to have some dialogue and songs sung in Spanish, which works well but can’t solely add an realism. The gangs just seem like really overly friendly guys.

I think this short review makes it seem like I disliked it more than I did in reality. I actually did enjoy it quite a bit, but just felt like they missed out on making a really, truly great revival.