“West Side Story” flickers above the MSO

I haven’t seen West Side Story in its entirety since I was in high school, when the 1961 film was still making its second-run rounds. The Milwaukee Symphony’s screening of the musical Friday night, with live orchestra led by Sarah Hicks, put in front of me once again the wonders of Leonard Bernstein’s music, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and, especially, Jerome Robbins’ dances.

Robbins, the main force behind the 1957 Broadway show that led to the film, managed to choreograph dances for the Jets and the Sharks that, in context, make convincing gang combat. The dance at the gym and “America,” the rooftop number for the Puerto Rican Sharks and their girls, capture the combustible sexual energy of teens left to fend for themselves. Friday night, the good-sized audience got so excited that it exploded in sustained applause after “America.”

These days, Arthur Laurents’ book looks naive about gang life. The boys engage in no criminal activity beyond shoplifting, for example; they fight for macho pride and little else, and they would prefer to limit combat to fisticuffs. But the book works as a free adaption of Romeo and Juliet, especially with the music and lyrics substituting for the poetical flow of Shakespeare’s verse. The reality doesn’t have to be 100% convincing; the dramatic arc is more important, and the arc is full of tragic grace.

Bernstein’s music remains sensational in the dance numbers and Italianate and touchingly intimate in the scenes between Tony and Maria. Bernstein assigned the Jets and their girls a nervous, driving jazzy version of late Swing. He gave the Sharks and their girls a riotous mambo in the gym and an “America” crackling with Spanish hemiolas (ONE-two-three-FOUR-five-six ONE TWO THREE). He gave Robbins brilliant dance music and Robbins responded in kind. The dancers throw themselves into these numbers with a wild athletic abandon that remains breathtaking decades later. Robert Wise co-directed with Robbins, and they and cinematographer Daniel Fapp collaborated on some of the best movie dance scenes of all time. My favorite is “Cool,” where the Jets — coiled springs after the violence earlier in the evening — try to settle themselves down. The movement of both dancers and cameras within a dingy parking garage crowded with cars is genius all around.

Now, you’ll notice I’m going on and on about an old movie and not so much about the orchestra. Well, that’s true to the experience. Though the MSO is right there on stage beneath the raised screen, you sort of forget about them and watch the movie pretty much the way you always watch the movie.

The orchestra’s only task — a formidable one, given the virtuoso requirements of the score, was to faithfully reproduce the underscoring, dance music and vocal accompaniment. Every player and conductor Hicks wore an earpiece with click track to keep the right tempo, and Hicks had a monitor with visual cues embedded into her special edition of the movie. They did incredibly well with all of this and stayed with the singers exactly, even in the operatic numbers in which the singers took expressive liberties. But Hicks could take no expressive liberties of her own. Her job was complicated, but in the end mechanical.

She and the MSO were so precise — so successful — that we might have been hearing the actual film soundtrack in the usual way, an illusion fostered by orchestral sound miked into the mix with the dialog and singing. So… why do this at all? Couldn’t we just watch the film with a good sound system and get the same effect without all the expense and effort? As much as I enjoyed Friday evening, I have no answer for those questions.

West Side Story is a special MSO program, not part of the Pops subscription season. Note the 7:30 p.m. concert for the repeat performance Saturday, Nov. 24. No Sunday concert. At Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. For tickets, call the Marcus box office, 414 273-7206, or visit the MSO website.

Lots happening; visit TCD’s Thanksgiving week On Stage column to plan your holiday weekend.