There’s a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.

We’ve all heard Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story so many times that it’s universal message of hope for “a new way of living, a way of forgiving” is too often lost in our familiarity with the tune.

But as West Side Story celebrates the 50th anniversary of its Broadway opening this week, I find myself imagining what an impact it must have had in its time, how audience members listening to Bernstein’s incredible score must have been entranced by it, and how Carol Lawrence’s first utterances of “How many bullets are in this gun? How many people can I kill, Chino?” must have been so jarring for audiences accustomed to The Music Man (which garnered the Tony over West Side Story) and Li’l Abner.

Lawrence still remembers the audience response after the first preview performance.

“They leapt to their feet screaming ‘bravo,’ stamping, sobbing and you knew something had struck a nerve in the American public.”

The day after its opening, Walter Kerr wrote in the New York Herald Tribune on September 27, 1957 that “The radioactive fallout from West Side Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning.”

I’ve done the show twice (once with later-to-be Rent star, Jim Poulos as Baby John, and his later-to-be-wife and Babes In Arms star, Melissa Rain Anderson as Maria) and each time I’m moved by the intricate and beautiful score, and the chill that falls over the audience as they watch Riff and Bernardo’s dead bodies being solemnly carried off the stage at the end of Act I.

So, I respectfully wish West Side Story a happy 50th anniversary, and sadly note the timeliness of its subject matter these fifty years later.

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