It was daring in 1957 for Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents to refashion William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a ­radical and contemporary Broadway musical – but, following an award-winning 1961 film adaptation, is it chutzpah for Steven Spielberg, who had never made a musical and admits he felt intimidated at taking on a work he regards as a masterpiece, to set out to re-invent West Side Story?

West Side Story
Director: Steven Spielberg

It was daring in 1957 for Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents to refashion William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a ­radical and contemporary Broadway musical – but, following an award-winning 1961 film adaptation, is it chutzpah for Steven Spielberg, who had never made a musical and admits he felt intimidated at taking on a work he regards as a masterpiece, to set out to re-invent West Side Story?

Although Tony Kushner’s script is new, Spielberg has wisely not touched the songs that are the beating heart of the story. The choreography, too, retains the knife-sharp ferocity of the earlier movie, dramatising the only means the young men of the “white trash” Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks have to assert their autonomy. But their swagger and bravado are futile – they’re fighting turf wars over streets subject to a slum clearance that will dispossess them all.

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