The tour of the Broadway revival of West Side Story is coming to the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. West Side Story will open at the Center on April 24, and tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, February 10 at 10:00 a.m. Tony Award®-winning librettist Arthur Laurents’ Broadway direction will be recreated for the tour by David Saint, the Associate Director on Broadway. The original Jerome Robbins choreography is reproduced by Tony Award-nominee Joey McKneely (The Boy from Oz, The Life).
Ticket prices for West Side Story start at $53. Beginning Friday, February 10 at 10:00 a.m., tickets will be available at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center’s ticket office and online at foxcitiespac.com. To charge tickets by phone, call Ticketmaster at (800) 982-2787. Orders for groups of ten or more may be placed now by calling (920) 730-3786.
The new Broadway cast album of West Side Story won the 2010 Grammy Award® for Best Musical Show Album on January 31, 2010. The Bernstein and Sondheim score is considered to be one of Broadway’s finest and features such classics of the American musical theater as “Something’s Coming,” “Tonight,” “America,” “I Feel Pretty” and “Somewhere.”
The new Broadway production began previews at the Palace Theatre on Broadway Monday, February 23, 2009, opened to critical acclaim breaking box office records at the Palace Theatre on Thursday, March 19, 2009, and recouped its $14 million investment after running only 30 weeks. The Broadway production played its final performance January 2, 2011. The musical played 27 previews and 748 regular performances, making it the longest-running production of the groundbreaking musical in Broadway history. The original production, which had held the record, played 732 performances on Broadway.
West Side Story features scenic designs by James Youmans (Gypsy), costumes by Tony Award nominee David C. Woolard (The Farnsworth Invention, The Who’s Tommy), lighting by Tony Award winner Howell Binkley (Gypsy, Jersey Boys), sound design by Tony Award nominee Dan Moses Schreier (Gypsy, A Catered Affair) and hair by Mark Adam Rampmeyer (The Farnsworth Invention).
West Side Story is written by three theatrical luminaries: two-time Tony Award winner Arthur Laurents (book) and multiple Tony and Grammy Award winners Leonard Bernstein (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) in his Broadway debut.
West Side Story is produced by Kevin McCollum, James L. Nederlander, Jeffrey Seller with Terry Allen Kramer, Sander Jacobs, Roy Furman / Jill Furman Willis, Robyn Goodman / Walt Grossman, Hal Luftig, Roy Miller and Broadway Across America.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
West Side Story had a long journey to Broadway. Six years elapsed between Jerome Robbins’ first idea of a modern musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and its actual Broadway debut in 1957. Originally, the action of the musical was to take place on New York’s Lower East Side with tensions flaring between Jews and Catholics during the Passover and Easter holidays. The original setting left the authors uninspired and the project was put on hold. Years later, when Arthur Laurents proposed changing the basis of conflict from religion to race, the show gained creative momentum and West Side Story was born.
