'West Side Story' like the first time opens new season at Asolo Rep

Over the last 15 years, Joey McKneely has become a sort of walking encyclopedia about “West Side Story.” but he has never actually danced in the show.

Marc Koeck as Tony and Jenna Burns as Maria star in "West Side Story" at Asolo Repertory Theatre. Annamae Photo/Provided by Asolo Rep

He performed musical numbers from “West Side” in the Tony Award-winning revue “Jerome Robbins Broadway,” where he got to observe and work with the legendary director and choreographer. Today, the Robbins estate often turns to McKneely when new productions of “West Side Story” are being produced.

“It’s part of my DNA now,” said McKneely, who can quickly ascertain a dancer’s ability to play one of the Sharks or Jets with just a few dance moves. “I’m all 33 people by this point.”

McKneely staged the dances for the most recent Broadway revival (directed by the show’s author Arthur Laurents) and in London, and directed and choreographed a European tour. But with the production that opens a new season for Asolo Repertory Theatre on Friday, he has his first chance to direct AND choreograph the show in the United States.

“I’ve been able to bring the show around the world for the past 15 years and always with an American cast,” McKneely said during a recent break from rehearsals. “I’ve done this level of intensity and shown it everywhere, but I’ve never had the opportunity to show my theater circle and the people in America what I can do with ‘West Side Story.'”

Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards said that he has long wanted to include "West Side Story" in Asolo Rep's five-year exploration of the American Character and he "couldn't imagine doing it with anybody else" other than McKneely.

Joey McKneely is the director and choreographer of "West Side Story" at Asolo Repertory Theatre. STAFF PHOTO / DAN WAGNER

With music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents, “West Side Story” is a modern twist on “Romeo and Juliet,” about two gangs — the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks — battling over a patch of land on the West Side of Manhattan. Amid the fights and threats, love still blossoms between the Tony, a Jet, and Maria, the sister of Shark leader Bernardo. The young lovers can’t see anything else in the world but one another.

The show was a groundbreaker when it opened, mystifying some critics, who described Bernstein’s now classic and familiar score as “shrill” and commenting on the hideousness of the gang situation, understandable considering that people were rarely murdered in Broadway musicals in a season when “The Music Man” beat “West Side Story” for the best musical Tony Award. (Robbins did win for his choreography.)

But the musical still attracted a crowd and ran for nearly two years before cementing its place in popular culture with the 1961 film directed by Robert Wise and Robbins, ensuring a future of Broadway revivals, national tours and countless community theater productions.

“Everybody remembers their first time seeing ‘'West Side Story,'” said McKneely, who is working to create a production that will trigger that first-time excitement for the Asolo Rep audience.

From left, Travante S. Baker, Andrés Acosta as Bernardo and James Gregory Jeffery in Asolo Rep's production of "West Side Story." Photo by Annamae Photo.

The show touches audiences in a special way, but it has an equal if not longer-lasting impact on the cast members.

“You don’t know how much of a gift it is until you walk away from it,” said Andrés Acosta, who plays Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks. Acosta performed in a sometimes grueling nine-month tour of the show that McKneely choreographed. “It’s such a gift to come back to it. You can go on to do other shows that are not as rewarding and not as well-written or have that choreography that fuels you every day and has a book that’s so efficient. Emotionally, it’s a very rewarding thing.”

Most of McKneely’s cast are newcomers to Asolo Rep, including Jenna Burns as Maria and Marc Koeck as Tony. Virgil Matalau, one of two seniors at Booker High School’s Visual and Performing Arts Center in the cast (Victoria Byrd is the other), plays Bernardo’s second-in-command Chino. Amos Wolff plays the Jets leader Riff, and Kenn Christopher, a 1985 FSU/Asolo Conservatory graduate, plays Doc, the owner of the soda shop where the Jets hang out, and Officer Krupke, who tries to keep a lid on tensions between the two gangs and becomes the subject of the show’s most comical number.

Burns said working with McKneely and music director Donald Chan, another ‘West Side Story’ veteran, has been been inspiring because of the experience they bring to the show.

“This has been a whole new ballgame. Joey and Donald is like the dream team with their relationship to the show, their knowledge of it and passion for it is so evident. Everything they’re passing on to us is so valuable.”

Amos Wolff plays Riff, leader of the Jets, in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of "West Side Story." Annamae Photo/Provided by Asolo Rep

Chan will conduct an 11-piece orchestra, embellished with a virtual orchestra “to support certain aspects of the show,” McKneely said. “The orchestrations in ‘West Side’ are so iconic.”

Burns has done the show twice before in other roles. “My parents will see me do ‘West Side’ for the third time, but I know they’ll see something completely different.”

Koeck, who is more a singer than dancer, said it’s been “interesting to watch a show being conceptualized around the dance. Usually by the time I get there, the choreography is done. But here I can feel it, it’s very visceral. Joey can physicalize every emotion.”

While he follows the Robbins blueprint for choreography, McKneely now has his first chance to stage the show with his own vision.

“I’m going for a more stylized production than I’ve ever done before because I don’t want it to be a carbon copy. I want to make a unique production for Asolo Rep,” he said.

That includes a scenic design by Lee Savage that says “something’s not right with this world. Everything’s slightly tilted,” McKneely said. “It’s like we’re going into a downward spiral and we’re going to crash. We’ve seen the movie and we’ve seen the reality. I can’t give you the movie on stage, but I want to give you the imagery of that, that something’s not right, but it’s not cartoonish either.”

Sketches of Ann Hould-Ward's costumes for "West Side Story" at Asolo Rep. STAFF PHOTO/JAY HANDELMAN

Ann Hould-Ward, the Tony Award-winning costume designer of “Beauty and the Beast” and more than a dozen other Broadway productions, has created contrasting outfits for the performers.

“It’s very black and white in a lot of ways,” McKneely said of the story. “We talked about how can we stylize it to continue to tell our story and for me the story is about two clashing cultures.”

So Hould-Ward created costumes that are black and white, in essence, for the Jets, who come from the gray world of New York, and she uses more vibrant colors suggesting a Caribbean island for the Sharks.

The cast members know that by the time they leave Sarasota after Christmas, they will have changed as artists.

Tahlia Joanna Byers, who plays Anybody's, with Brianna Abruzzo. Byers is one of several Sarasota area performers featured in "West Side Story" at Asolo Rep. STAFF PHOTO/JAY HANDELMAN

“I will have grown so much as an actor, as a singer, as a dancer and as a person,” Burns said. “I’m trying to soak up every moment of this experience.” And Koeck said the show “makes you go on a journey. It’s unique among all shows. Every character starts and ends someplace different. In some shows, maybe the leads change.”

Just as audiences remember their first time seeing “West Side Story,” McKneely said it changes every performer in the cast.

“You remember it the rest of your life,” he said. “I want to say it’s like a little private society. It’s like a badge of honor. You accomplished something.”

THEATER PREVIEW
"WEST SIDE STORY"
Previews at 8 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, Opens 8 p.m Friday. Through Dec. 27, Asolo Repertory Theatre, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets start at $26. 351-8000; asolorep.org. Wednesday and Thursday evening performances (except previews) now begin at 7:30 p.m.