West End Story

The renaissance of the musical in the West End reaches a climax next month when what has been billed as the greatest musical collaboration of all time arrives in London. With its story of gang violence in the slums, of racial tension and the strain of cross-cultural relationships, it sounds as if it should be an experimental work at the Royal Court.

Yet this particular show is more than 40 years old - and has benefited from a careful "facelift" both to bring it more up to date and make it more faithful to the original concept.

West Side Story, arriving in London hard on the heels of Chicago, Rent and Showboat, has played to ecstatic reviews on tour for the past 12 months. Producer Andre Ptaszynski said: "We have had an extraordinary reception, and have high hopes for London."

The show has earned the ultimate accolade from one of the men behind the original 1957 production. Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book, saw the production in Southampton and immediately offered to help with the revival.

"He loved it, and offered to fine-tune the production to bring it up to date," explained Mr Ptaszynski. "He wanted to see it arrive in London in the best possible state. We've updated the show for the Nineties while at the same time remaining faithful to the original Fifties feel. It's been sharpened up and made less saccharine. Most musicals accumulate a few barnacles as they get older, and this is no exception, so we've gone back to the original and made it harder-hitting and raunchier. The score for the film version was very syrupy, and we've gone back to a brassier, harder sound that is more appropriate."

Already, with no advertising campaign, the show has taken around £1 million in advance bookings - mainly due to word-of-mouth recommendations from those who have seen the touring version - which has helped to handsomely offset the £2 million production costs.

Choreographer Jerome Robbins - who died aged 79 only two months ago - conceived West Side Story in 1957 as a contemporary Broadway version of Romeo and Juliet.

For years he had wanted to create a show which combined all the best forms of theatrical art, and with Bernstein's score, Sondheim's lyrics and Laurents' book, the show's success was guaranteed - even if Sondheim and Bernstein dis-agreed and fought over virtually every word of the production.

West Side Story was an instant smash hit on Broadway, with 732 performances. In London it ran even longer with 1,039 performances at Her Majesty's Theatre from 1958.

With its choreographed racial tension and outbreaks of violence between street gangs - white Americans (the Jets) against Hispanic Puerto Ricans (the Sharks) - the show astonished British theatregoers with its fast-moving sharpness, emotion and vitality.

The legendary critic Ken Tynan wrote after the Broadway opening that Robbins "projects the show as a rampaging ballet with bodies flying through the air as if shot from guns, leaping, shrieking and somersaulting. Yet he finds room for a peaceful dream sequence, full of that hankering for a golden age that runs right through American musicals, in which both gangs imagine a paradise where they can touch hands in love, without fear or loss of face".