Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination by Misha Berson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a Christmas gift this year from my mom. For those who are wondering why I’d receive a book seemingly outside my usual interests, that’s probably because you’re unaware that I participated a lot in theater up through high school. In 11th grade I played “Baby John” in Breck‘s production of West Side Story, which was a ton of fun. Parts of the musical are thus pretty ingrained, even almost 15 years later.

As is typical for my non-fiction reads, what I enjoyed the most was the trivia. In this case I was interested in all of the artistic choices that went into the musical, especially when they got into the differences between the original Broadway production and the film version, including some pretty significant differences in song ordering.

One of the interesting and surprising historical anecdotes was that Jerome Robbins was called to testify before HUAC, and named names, thus chilling his relationship with his co-creators. It’s striking how pervasive the fear of Communism was at the time.

I think the author was stretching things a bit when trying to make broader cultural claims about the influence of the musical as a reflection of youth culture of the time, but I expect that sort of thing from art critics. I suppose to some extent it confirms that some aspect of the Romeo & Juliet story is pretty timeless, no matter the incarnation.

Overall, it made me a bit nostalgic, missing my participation in theater, even though I doubt I ever had the chops to continue performing even as an amateur. If you are a fan of this musical, I would definitely recommend reading this book.