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Wednesday, March 19, 2003

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

High school musicals have a special savor. Youthful energy, the talent they discover and the commitment and teamwork they require -- all these give them a zest that's hard for the audience to resist.

	The Sharks and Jets get this season's Chartiers Valley High School musical off to a good start in the the prologue to "West Side Story." More pictures from the show. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

They can generate a natural high for the participating students, teachers and parents, too, especially when that teamwork unites elements within the school community that may not have worked together on anything else.

This doesn't apply just to the musical at your local high school. Sometimes you can even sense that special tang more clearly elsewhere, as those know who are smart enough to see a couple of high school musicals a year.

But beyond that special sauce of energy, commitment and discovery, there's the show itself. And in a dozen years of writing about high school musicals, I've never been more aware of the meal itself and the specific relevance of its subject matter than last weekend, watching my first high school musical of the year, "West Side Story" at Chartiers Valley in Collier.

It's a gutsy choice. Dance is the musical theater discipline that is usually hardest for a high school, and dance is the emotional heart of "West Side Story" as conceived by Jerome Robbins and scored by Leonard Bernstein.

But on the other hand, what a natural choice. "West Side Story" is about the clash between new-born hopefulness and inherited reality. It's about how to be different and how to fit in, with all the anguish that means in the high school years. It's about young love and the failure of an older generation that expects the young to adopt its own prejudices. And it's about how fighting can be easier than making peace.

Sounds pretty contemporary. There isn't a high school anywhere that doesn't experience these pressures of conformity and difference, often expressed, as in Arthur Laurents' book and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, as ethnic rivalries. And the choice between war and peace is relevant at every level, from local to international.

By now, it seems less important that this 1958 musical is such a conscious reworking of "Romeo and Juliet." English classes doubtless enjoy working out the parallels, but the differences are even more instructive. In Shakespeare, the adults (parents, Friar, Nurse) are a meddling lot who fail their young, but in the musical, they're worse, ineffectual to the point of irrelevance. The young have to parent each other. As a result, the world seems darker, in spite of the compensatory lyricism of music and dance. The modern Juliet does not die: Maria is left to point the moral and lead the surviving young in mourning. For a brief moment we may hope that the new generation will repair the tattered world we've left them.

Fortunately, the firm adult leadership denied the Sharks and Jets is available at Chartiers Valley in producer-director-choreographer Renee Ann Keil. For Sharks and Jets, sustaining cultural patterns have broken down, but there's a healthy counter pattern at Chartiers, where the tradition of musicals goes back more than three decades.

In fact, Keil was a student performer in the first Chartiers musical, and she directed her first "West Side Story" there in 1975, with, then and now, her husband, C. Thomas Keil, Jr. directing the orchestra.

Chartiers chose to showcase this tradition two ways: this year's capable orchestra was a blend of 16 students and 12 alumni, and as a post-show extra on Friday, a dozen alumni of that 1975 production reprised one song.

But the most fruitful evidence of that tradition was where it was needed most -- in the big dance numbers and their ensemble cohesion.

Renee Keil leads a dance and theater program at Chartiers, but training isn't what made the dancing in the prologue, the scene at the gym, the rumble and the "Somewhere" fantasy so electric -- it was the utter commitment of the student performers.

Keil choreographed movement they could execute, but it was up to them to bring it alive with passion and focus.

That prologue was the key: You knew right off the musical was in good hands. It was so strong, it was a shame they had to stop dancing and talk.

If dance was this show's strength -- and with it the sense of conflict and character that dance dramatizes -- then acting was its weakness, with singing falling in-between.

The spoken dialogue sometimes lacked conviction, but perhaps that's mainly in contrast to the conviction of the same characters set in motion to music.

Other ensemble high points were, for the Sharks, an ebullient "America," with its electric "Yi-yi's," and, for the Jets, a funny, robust "Officer Krupke," full of rich attitudes, with the Action of Dom DeNardis-Ulizzi singing lead.

The softer lyricism of "Somewhere" centered on the strong dance of Jordan DeBona (who also played a virile Bernardo) and Brittany Steding.

Kristi Hodgkins as Maria sings during the opening act of "West Side Story." (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

Dan Wind's Tony was an appealing, natural presence, but the vocal honors fell to Kristi Hodgkins' Maria. Lauren Macroglou was a powerful, statuesque Anita, such that her embitterment in the drugstore scene was the wrenching turning point it should be.

Chris Czambel's Riff had the best Noo Yawk accent, Mike Viola's Chino showed physical presence and there were many other individual moments of pugnacity and sizzle.

Keil modernized the show in largely unobtrusive ways. She worked girls into the gangs and cast Doc and the chaperone at the gym as women.

A sign identified it as an "Oldies Dance," to make it plausible that they actually danced in each others' arms.

An energized crew performed scene changes as fast and seamless as I've ever seen, aided by Cindy Berg's efficient set. Andrew Giffin's lights provided lots of atmosphere.

The amplification was balky, but erratic mics are part of the tradition of high school musicals, too.

So are T-shirts, which at Chartiers listed the entire cast and crew. There was a preview performance for senior citizens, which also served as picture night for parents. It was, as any high school musical should be, a community event.

But mainly there were 50-some kids performing on stage with determination and flair, looking great, and reminding us that we are indeed our brothers' keepers.