INTERVIEW. The cult musical West Side Story returns to Paris, from October 20 to December 31, 2023 at the Théâtre du Châtelet. We were able to interview Lonny Price, director of the show.
West Side Story, the cult musical, is back in Paris. A new version of this timeless classic, which will be performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet, from October 20 to December 31, 2023. It is the American Broadway director, Lonny Price, who has taken on the task of this new chapter of a show so many times revived since its creation by Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim in 1956 – West Side Story was first performed on Broadway in September 1957.
“Revisiting such a beloved work adds extra pressure, but the reason it is so loved is because it is excellent!”, confides Lonny Price to Linternaute a few days before the premiere in Paris.
“The show is one of the jewels of American musical theater, with one of the most brilliant scores ever written for the theater, not to mention Mr. Robbins’ iconic and dazzling choreography. I have seen several revivals of the show , and while I enjoyed each of them, sometimes the performances seemed less important than the dancing. I set myself the goal of making the scenes as viscerally exciting as the dancing. It was a challenge and I was thrilled to raise it,” adds the director.
Seen and reviewed on stage as in the cinema, until 2021 with Steven Spielberg’s version, the musical West Side Story still seems as current. For Lonny Price, the show “tells a story that is still relevant. Young love, facing a cruel world filled with violence, prejudice and xenophobia. Unfortunately, our world still embodies all of these things as much as it did when the show premiered in 1956, and as long as there is love and hate in the world, West Side Story will always be relevant.
Lonny Price decided to focus his production on qualifying the famous American dream, at the heart of the story of West Side Story, but which was in reality only a myth. The plot involves two rival gangs facing off in New York’s Upper West Side, the Jets, Irish and Polish, against the Sharks, Puerto Rican immigrants. This ideal of the American dream, according to Lonny Price, excludes “both the Jets because of their socio-economic situation and of course the Sharks because of the color of their skin.”
He adds: “The truth is, the American dream has always been more of a dream than a reality. We begin the show with the Statue of Liberty being torn apart, as we begin to deconstruct that dream in real time.”
This 2023 version of the show will obviously be an opportunity for spectators to rehear the great songs that contributed to the popularity of West Side Story, such as Maria, America or Tonight.
The world tour of this new production of West Side Story began in mid-December 2022 in Munich, before performances throughout Europe until June 2023, then a burst of dates in Asia and finally, Paris in the fall of 2023. West Side Story plays at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris from October 20 to December 31, 2023.
This is the third time that this cult show has been performed in the capital. The last time, in 2017 at the Seine Musicale, sold out from the opening, had once again proven that West Side Story is and will remain a huge success. “As long as young people fall in love, this story will sing to us all,” sums up Lonny Price, who hopes that his version of West Side Story will make viewers “feel like they are watching it for the very first time.”
After its visit to Paris, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, the West Side Story troupe will be on tour throughout France. Here are the dates :
