What Is West Side Story?

West Side Story is a landmark American musical conceived by choreographer-director Jerome Robbins, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is one of the most celebrated works in the history of the musical theatre — a Romeo and Juliet for mid-century New York, where the warring Montagues and Capulets have become the Jets and the Sharks.

Set on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the mid-1950s, then a multiracial, blue-collar neighbourhood undergoing dramatic change, the show explores the violent rivalry between two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The Jets are white Americans; the Sharks are recent migrants from Puerto Rico. Both vie for control of the same few city blocks. Into this world steps Tony, a former Jet, who falls hopelessly in love with Maria — the sister of Bernardo, the Sharks’ leader. The story ends in tragedy.

What set West Side Story apart from everything that had come before it was its unflinching seriousness — its dark themes, sophisticated music, extended dance sequences, tragic conclusion, and direct engagement with social issues of race, immigration, and gang violence. The show marked a turning point in the history of the Broadway musical, demonstrating that the form could carry the weight of genuine tragedy and political meaning.

It was also the Broadway debut of Stephen Sondheim as a lyricist — a beginning that would eventually lead to the most celebrated body of work in the history of the American musical theatre.

The Road to Broadway — A Story Eight Years in the Making

1949: The First Spark

The story of West Side Story begins in 1949, when choreographer Jerome Robbins approached composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents about collaborating on a contemporary musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. His original concept was quite different from the show we know today: Robbins proposed setting the conflict on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, with a Catholic boy and a Jewish girl, their families torn apart by antisemitism during the Easter-Passover season. Laurents wrote a first draft he called East Side Story. The team quickly concluded it covered ground already familiar from plays like Abie’s Irish Rose, and Robbins stepped away. The project was shelved for nearly five years.

1955: A Fresh Start — and a Latin Beat

In 1955, Laurents was hired to write the screenplay for a Hollywood film and found himself in Los Angeles. He met Bernstein — who was in town conducting at the Hollywood Bowl — at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Front-page newspaper stories about a Chicano turf war in Los Angeles turned the conversation to juvenile gang violence. Laurents felt he knew the Puerto Rican communities of New York better than the Mexican American communities of LA. The two contacted Robbins, who was “enthusiastic about a musical with a Latin beat.” The project was back on track — this time as West Side Story.

Enter Stephen Sondheim

Bernstein had decided to concentrate solely on the music and needed a sole lyricist. Betty Comden and Adolph Green had been invited but opted to work on Peter Pan instead. At a New York opening night party, Laurents encountered the young Stephen Sondheim — who had written music and lyrics for his own show, Saturday Night. Initially Sondheim resisted, determined to write his own full score next time rather than be a hired lyricist for someone else’s music. But his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II convinced him that he would benefit enormously from the experience. Sondheim accepted.

During the pre-Broadway tryout in Washington D.C., an important moment occurred: Bernstein removed his co-lyricist billing from the credits, giving Sondheim sole credit. Though the precise reasons remain disputed — Bernstein later said his lyric contributions had simply diminished as the writing progressed — Sondheim was himself uncertain he wanted sole credit for work he felt had been significantly shaped by Bernstein. Regardless, by opening night on Broadway, none of the collaborators were speaking to Robbins, who had used his “Conceived by” credit to justify making major unilateral decisions about the show.

The Struggle to Get It Staged

With the show nearly complete in late 1956, it still had no money behind it. A backers’ audition in spring 1957 — just two months before rehearsals were due to begin — raised nothing. Producer Cheryl Crawford withdrew. Every other producer had already turned it down, calling it too dark and depressing. Bernstein was despondent.

Sondheim then persuaded his friend Hal Prince — then overseeing a tryout in Boston — to read the script. Prince liked it; his mentor George Abbott told him to turn it down. Prince, recognising that Abbott was the reason the Boston show was in trouble, ignored him. He flew to New York with his partner Robert E. Griffith to hear the score. In his memoir, Prince recalled: his experience hearing Bernstein and Sondheim play through the music was galvanising. Prince and Griffith agreed to produce it.

Casting and Rehearsals

Casting presented its own extraordinary challenge: performers who could sing, dance, and act at a professional level — and pass as teenagers. Laurents had originally wanted James Dean for Tony; Dean died before the show entered production. Sondheim discovered Larry Kert for the role, while Chita Rivera was cast as Anita — a career-defining performance. Robbins kept the Jets and Sharks cast members strictly separated throughout rehearsals, forbidding them from socialising with each other. He posted real news stories about gang violence on the backstage bulletin board. He wanted — and got — something that felt urgently, frighteningly real.

Throughout rehearsals, Columbia Records initially declined to record the cast album, calling the score too depressing and too difficult. They were wrong about that too. The show opened in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia to enthusiastic responses before its Broadway debut on September 26, 1957, at the Winter Garden Theatre.

The Jets & The Sharks

The show’s full roster of characters — teenage gang members, their girls, and the adults caught between them — populate one of the most vibrant and precisely observed ensembles in Broadway history.

The Plot — Act by Act

Songs — Bernstein’s Score

Bernstein composed the score for West Side Story concurrently with his operetta Candide, and several musical ideas migrated between the two works. The score is one of the most technically ambitious in Broadway history — operatic in scale, rhythmically daring (the “Ma-ri-a” melody uses an augmented fourth that singers were warned was unsignable), and yet intensely theatrical. Below is the complete song list.

The Cast That Made History

The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, ran for 732 performances, and closed on June 27, 1959. Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal. Lighting design by Jean Rosenthal.

From 1957 to Today — Every Major Production

Two Landmark Films — Six Decades Apart

West Side Story has been adapted for the cinema twice — sixty years apart — and both times the film earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture. Both films left their mark on cinema history.

Nominations & Awards

Original Broadway — 1958 Tony Awards

1961 Film — Academy Awards

1980 Broadway Revival — Tony Awards

2009 Broadway Revival — Tony Awards

2021 Film — Academy Awards

Why West Side Story Changed Everything

West Side Story arrived on Broadway in 1957 and changed the theatre forever. Before it, musicals were primarily vehicles for entertainment — song, dance, and comedy in well-tested combinations. Tragedy was not the musical’s mode. Social criticism was not its business. Death at the final curtain was unthinkable.

West Side Story broke every one of those rules. It ended on two deaths in Act One and a third in Act Two. It addressed race, immigration, police racism, and gang violence with a directness that no musical had attempted. Its score was operatically demanding in ways that terrified producers and record labels alike. Its choreography was not decoration — it was character, story, and emotion expressed through bodies moving in space. Jerome Robbins made the dancing as narratively essential as any spoken word.

The show was also the Broadway debut of Stephen Sondheim as a lyricist — the beginning of a career that would itself transform the musical theatre over the following six decades. Ironically, Sondheim always had mixed feelings about West Side Story: he’d wanted to write both music and lyrics for his next project and considered the lyrics, influenced by Bernstein’s contributions, imperfect. History has disagreed.

It established Hal Prince as one of the defining producers of the Broadway musical — a career that would go on to include Cabaret, Company, Sweeney Todd, Phantom of the Opera, and many more. It gave Chita Rivera her star-making role. It produced one of the greatest film adaptations in the history of the musical — and then, sixty years later, inspired another.