No matter how much you may loathe remakes of classic movies, you know you will not be able to resist Steven Spielberg’s adaption of Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story that won an unprecedented 10 Academy Awards back in 1961.
As you would expect Spielberg has assembled a formidable team starting with a script by the queer Pulitzer Prize writer Tony Kushner (Angels in America): New York City Ballet’s Tony Award Winner Justin Peck is doing the choreography; multi-award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home) is in charge of vocals; Guastavo Dudamel the music director of the Opéra national de Paris. is conducting the score, with arrangements by Daniel Newman.
Spielberg’s cast includes some of the brightest Broadway names, but undoubtedly the real star for most of us will be 90-year-old Rita Moreno (the original Oscar-Winning Anita playing the role of Valentina in which she sings Somewhere. Her castmates include Ansel Elgort (Tony) and Rachel Zegler (Maria), Ariana DeBose (Anita), Mike Faist (Riff), David Alvarez (Bernardo), Josh Andrés Rivera (Chino), Corey Stoll (Lieutenant Schrank), Brian d’Arcy James (Sergeant Krupke), Ana Isabelle (Rosalia),
West Side Story arrives in cinemas on December 10.
