America – West Side Story Cast (1961)
Puerto Rico
My heart’s devotion
Let it sink back in the ocean
Always the hurricanes blowing
Always the population growing
And the money owing
And the sunlight streaming
And the natives steaming
I like the island Manhattan (I know you do!)
Smoke on your pipe
And put that in!
Stephen Sondheim passed away 5 days ago and the nation went into mourning. The gay jewish bit did anyway, the artists writers singers and actors, dancers directors and stage managers. Being the bloody-minded twerp that I am though, I was silent for three days and then walked around telling anyone who would listen that I wasn’t really a fan of musical theatre, with the exceptions of Wizard of Oz, Singin’ In The Rain and West Side Story, there was something about the form that didn’t vibe with my spirit. My brother Andrew offered Andrew Lloyd Webber as having ruined the musical for him. Then at Thanksgiving last Thursday at Aaron & Cathy Nottage‘s house up in White Plains, Tony Gerber invited me to the DGA to see Spielberg‘s loving remix of Bernstein and Sondheim (and Arthur Laurents & Jerome Robbins‘) masterpiece. We went last night.
I like to be in America, Okay by me in America, Everything free in America
For a small fee in America
After the seizure in September (see My Pop Life #261 Titanium) everything went weird. Doctors, pain, Aleve, acupuncture (amazing), getting Jenny onto her feet to go back onto Broadway (priority), trying to wake up and unfold before Jenny tells me to straighten up, then suddenly going to the theatre three times a week to see shows that my friends had written (Clyde’s, MJ) directed (Trouble In Mind) or were acting in (The Michaels In Europe, Caroline or Change, Harry Potter & The Cursed Child). And then studying for my citizenship exam which was face-to-face in the Homeland Security Building downtown opposite City Hall. Went through the metal detectors and up the elevator and stood in line and waited and then went into an office with a plastic shield I sat behind and was asked various questions by a tall young probably gay latin fella in uniform. Had I ever sold weapons to a terrorist? Had I ever participated in a revolution? Would I be prepared to fight in the US Military if called upon to do so?
At this last question I said “You do realise I will be 65 on my next birthday don’t you?” To his credit he laughed and said yes sir, but would you be. I said sure but I didn’t mean it. He carried on asking me these Homeland Security-style questions and I answered No to all of them, which soon became No Sir then gradually morphed into an American accent No Sir and by the end of the questions I had quite simply become American. No shit. Then we got into the exam itself. They had set 100 questions which are not secret and I simply learned the answers, which is what you’re supposed to do. I would be asked ten of them, six of which I had to get correct. Question One was
General Eisenhower fought in which War before becoming President?
(I knew it) The Second World War
Where is the Statue of Liberty ?
(are you kidding me?) New York Harbour
What is the capital of the United States?
(ummmmm…) Washington D.C.
The law of the USA is based on what?
(genuinely tricky) The Constitution
Who is The President of The United States?
(this is the same question that the paramedics asked me on the morning of my seizure. I didn’t know that day.)
Joseph Robernick Biden
I don’t remember the sixth question but I gave a correct answer. I know that because he didn’t ask me any more questions. No need. I’d answered them all correctly. I think they get a random selection from the 100 possible questions but I did hit on three of the very easiest ones didn’t I?
And then four weeks later I was invited back to the same building for my Naturalization (with a z) and Oath Ceremony. The September seizure was part of a pattern of my brain becoming perhaps a little undependable – for example one night in August I took Luke Cresswell – here to rehearse Stomp back onto the stage – to see Eddie Palmieri at the Blue Note in the Village and : we were four weeks late. Oh how he laughed, fair dinkum, we got drunk – I was embarrassed and shamed to be frank, but what can you do? Palmieri is 81 and who knows if I’ll get that opportunity again. So then I turned up for my Citizenship Ceremony a day early too.
I was through the metal detector, up the elevator, stood in line reached the desk. Give us your Green Card. What’s your name? Couldn’t find me. Consternation. Some bright spark suggested checking the date. It’s tomorrow sir. Then I went back home.
That night Jenny and I went out. It was the opening night of Caroline, or Change starring our friend Sharon D. Clarke in her Broadway debut, playing the lead role of the maid in 1960s Louisiana. She’d been doing the part for years in the UK and won the Olivier award for it – then last March 2020 they got as far as a Broadway dress rehearsal before the pandemic shut the production down. This was a night delayed by eighteen long months and was all the more emotional for it. A magnificent score by Jeanine Tesori and wonderful words by Tony Kushner. They were both present. I don’t think I’ve ever wept like that in a theatre – behind a mask like everyone else – tears rolling down my face. I think I was crying for myself as much as Caroline, and Sharon. Why? I don’t really know to be honest. We went back to her apartment perched over 8th Avenue overlooking the theatre district and the Hudson River and drank gin for a couple of hours with Susie McKenna Sharon’s wife, our friends Heidi Griffiths & Edna Benitez and – familiar folk kept arriving – sweet Ann Yee the choreographer (that Jenny had also worked with on Julius Caesar, the show that took us to New York), Michael Longhurst the show’s director, whose partner Des Kennedy directed Jenny in Harry Potter and who was helping remount the show again. It felt so familiar to be having a first night party, and yet so rare, so precious, so very missed. Most triumphs appear to be about deferred gratification and it was a memorable night. And by the way, everybody congratulated me on becoming an American. I can write that line without feeling anything but it doesn’t seem real to me at all.
The following morning, keeping the hangover at bay with milkthistle, I take the 4 train to City Hall, walk through the metal detector, travel up the elevator, wait on a chair opposite a guy from Guyana and a guy from Kosovo then wait on line and finally get called back to that familiar window from the day before and pow ! I receive a small flag called the Stars and Stripes, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I took an oath of allegiance, and denied my (non-existent) allegiance to the UK, although I will never abandon the England football team. Don’t test me. I handed in my Green Card. Bye bye Green Card. In return I received a certificate of Citizenship which I had to send away when I applied for a passport earlier this week. Then in eight weeks I’ll get an American Passport. I’ll get to keep my British Passport. I’ll have dual nationality. It means I can travel with freedom back and forth without being asked at JFK or LAX “How long have you been away sir?”
Buying on credit is so nice,
[One look at us and they charge twice]
I have my own washing machine
[What will you have though to keep clean?]
I registered to vote straightaway. I didn’t tick the Democratic box though, stayed independent. I’m allowed to run for office too. If I seriously decide to do that, (you never know) it will have to be on a Democratic ticket, because I guess it’s really hard without some organisation behind you. Jury Service suddenly becomes compulsory. I feel slightly less foreign. I can join the fast track in customs. Hooray. Not that grateful though. I still have my white European entitlement in other words. Hard to tell what everyone else was feeling, truly, in that room.
But my life goes on pretty much as it always did. Kind of. Tony and I go to movies, go to gigs – Angelique Kidjo at Carnegie Hall – she’s an interesting cat by the way. She opened at 8pm singing McCartney’s Mother Nature’s Son accompanied by acoustic guitar, and later sang with guests Phillip Glass, Josh Groban, Andra Day and Cyndi Lauper. Afterwards we walked down to 52nd Street and Tony introduced me to The Vodka Bar where there’s a piano in the corner and folk sing Russian comic songs or Piaf and we sampled the vodka menu. And of course Tony has just produced Takeover – a documentary about the Young Lords, a Nuyorican civil rights group who occupied a hospital in the Bronx for 24 hours in 1969. The doc is getting an Oscar push and will be a drama at some point too. I wrote about it in My Pop Life #260 Pa’lante when we went to see it this summer in Soundview Park in the Bronx. Meanwhile I’ve started a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in Ditmas Park about 40 minutes away. I’m at the beginning of The Reckoning. Which started with the pandemic – same as everyone else – then was punctuated severely by the seizure. A wake-up call, literally, as I was waking up, which I don’t remember. Undiagnosed. But stress is the cause. Who knows if I can find out where that came from.
Skyscrapers bloom in America
Cadillacs zoom in America
Industry boom in America
Twelve in a room in America
The immigrant experience is the American experience of course. At Thanksgiving Dinner Lynn wanted to read an acknowledgement of the previous incumbents, the Lenape tribe who lived in this area before Europeans started to seek “Freedom”. And the racism of Old Europe is alive and well in the New World, built by slaves from Africa and serviced by the Spanish-speaking descendants of Cortez the Killer.
West Side Story is based on Romeo & Juliet but at its heart is racism, voiced in this song, and in the story. The four original auteurs – the four gay jews (as Kushner called them last night) wanted a jewish Tony and a Catholic Maria, and it was set on the East Side before the switch to what we know now. Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner have lifted this angle up and spotlit it for 2021. The Puerto Ricans speak Spanish to each other except when Anita – the amazing Ariana Debose – shouts “Speak English!” because they need to practice
ANITA
Lots of new housing with more space
BERNARDO
Lots of doors slamming in our face
ANITA
I’ll get a terrace apartment
BERNARDO
Better get rid of your accent
But in Spielberg’s re-examination of New York in 1957 (the year of my birth) the Spanish is not subtitled. This is a radical decision and places the Spanish language on the same level as English. Tony – played beautifully by Ansel Elgort – asks his ‘aunty’ Valentina played by Rita Moreno (lovely touch since she played Anita in the 1961 film) – how to say “forever” as he prepares for his date with Maria (Rachel Zegler). “I want to be with you forever”. She looks at him quizzically : “Don’t you want to start with “Shall we go for a coffee somewhere?” then gives him the word he wants – siempre – ‘always‘. Forever. And everyone who sees the movie will know how to say siempre afterwards. Babysteps. I am relearning Spanish and Jenny is joining me. We’ve been to Costa Rica for a week’s break just before the pandemic, seen monkeys on the telephone wires and spoken bad Spanish. The fellas who work for the landlady are from Panama and Ecuador. We’re surrounded by the language in New York – there are over a million Puerto Ricans here for a start – salsa was born here in the 1960s – and West Side Story was very much ahead of its time in this respect and in others.
ANITA
Life can be bright in America
BOYS
If you can fight in America
GIRLS
Life is all right in America
BOYS
If you’re all white in America
It is my favourite song from the show, from the film, I’ve always loved it. It’s not Puerto Rican music, there was no salsa beat in 1957, but there was plena and bomba then and the Cuban music on which much Puerto Rican music is based such as son and bolero, and the country music called jibaro. But there’s little of that. Leonard Bernstein has written a kind of hybrid of Spanish tropes and Mexican ritmo which is completely fantastical and which I find totally irresistible, catchy and thrilling in its rhythmical construction and rhyming couplets – a total dose of energy and an affirmation of life. When the song started last night at the Director’s Guild with the three-two clave beat a shiver went down my neck, then when the girls started singing, pins & needles tingled down my head to my spine, a completely physical reaction. By the end of the song I was weeping.
GIRLS
Here you are free and you have pride
BOYS
Long as you stay on your own side
GIRLS
Free to be anything you choose
BOYS
Free to wait tables and shine shoes
This is still very much the case. Of course there are middle-class latin families and businesses, but the majority are service workers who live an hour out from Manhattan where they can afford it. Our cleaner Claudia is from Guatemala. Taxi drivers, delivery workers in vans or on bikes, construction are almost all latino.
Of the white characters in the film, apart from Tony (a Polack) played by Elgort, and The Jets who are largely racist and open the film throwing paint at a Puerto Rico flag graffiti on a wall, we have the NYPD played by Corey Stoll and others and Officer Krupke played by Brian D’Arcy James who played Quinn Carney in The Ferryman with me on Broadway in 2019 and is here doing sterling work. The cast are actually fantastic, most of them singing, dancing AND acting. Triple threats. The choreography is thrilling as it must be. After the film and the Q&A we walked down to The Vodka Room again. It was calling us.
BERNARDO
Everywhere grime in America
Organized crime in America
Terrible time in America
ANITA
You forget I’m in America
Jenny was in England when I applied for Citizenship, and I couldn’t apply for her. So she’ll go through the system just like I did in a few month’s time. And then we’ll go on holiday to Puerto Rico. Which is part of the United States. Don’t actually need a passport. It just isn’t a State. One day though, it will be.
BERNARDO
I think I’ll go back to San Juan
ANITA
I know a boat you can get on (Bye Bye!)
BERNARDO
Everyone there will give big cheer!
ANITA
Everyone there will have moved here
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America from West Side Story (1961) :
Trailer for the new film :
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