WEST SIDE, East Side…All around the world (Part 2)
The staying power of West Side Story, Part 1.
When I was a kid growing up, my parents bought me a portable General Electric record player. This is the actual model I got for my eleventh birthday. On that same birthday, I received four LPs as part of my birthday gifts; all of them original cast recordings. Brigadoon, Mame, Man of La Mancha and Cabaret. My parents saw these shows either in tryouts or National Tours as they came through Boston. They were sensitive parents who took note of my interests from the get go. That following Easter my Dad (the family's Easter Rabbit) bought me the original cast recording of West Side Story. Up until that time, it was a piece he’d not seen onstage. But, as the son of an Irish cop living in South Boston during the 1940s, the 1962 film left an indelible impression on him. That same year, a friend of the family lost their son in Vietnam. The war was raging. Tempers were flaring. West Side Story was once again a hot potato of pent up feeling. Dad took me to a summer stock production at Cohasset’s South Shore Music Circus that had some of the original supporting cast members still driving it forward. Witnessing my Dad’s excitement as we drove towards it and then seeing his own catharsis as we drove away from the experience—well, let’s say as a child I’d not seen him open to me emotionally like he did that summer night. In a way I guess I was embarrassed in not knowing how to deal with it. That night evoked a sense of shared melancholy between us. 1968 was an emotionally loaded year. The territorial battle being played out in West Side Story might have been interpreted any number of ways.
Before I knew it I was home from our summer cottage adventure…and foolishly inspired. My grandparents had bought a portable typewriter for me on my 12th birthday. The first project was a sadly unfinished sequel to West Side Story that began with a pregnant Maria disembarking from the plane that was bringing her back to Puerto Rico. I didn’t quite know where to take my creative imagination from there. So, sadly the world will never know of the potential power it held.
But, I digress…
And, speaking of West Side Story…
Could it be?
Yes…It could.
Something’s Coming.
Until that time…
Be Well…
And stay engaged.
Bye-bye for now.
