Cuts & Changes Revealed for Ivo van Hove's Broadway Revival of West Side Story

Avant-garde director Ivo van Hove is gearing up to present main-stem audiences with a fresh take on the classic American musical West Side Story next month. The Tony winner whose triumphs include a stripped-down production of A View From the Bridge and a recent high-tech staging of Network spoke with Vogue about his perspective on West Side Story and the trimming and reshaping he has planned, some elements of which purists might take issue with.

"When I listened to it again, when I read it again, I discovered this very brutal world, a divided world where people search for unity by exclusion of the other—the person who is not like you," van Hove told Vogue. "It seemed as if it were written yesterday. So that's our aspiration: to make a West Side Story for the 21st century."

Part of meeting that vision included making cuts and alterations to the original work. For example, van Hove will use the version of "America" from the 1961 film adaptation rather than the one from the 1957 original Broadway production. Also, with the blessing of the creators' estates and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, 89, van Hove's production will excise "I Feel Pretty" and the "Somewhere" ballet.

Van Hove hopes that these revisions will capture the velocity of the musical's events, which occur over the course of 48 hours. His Broadway production will take place over one intermissionless act.

Another element of the new West Side Story that is getting attention is the integration of new choreography by internationally acclaimed move maker Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, marking the first time a U.S. production of the musical does not feature the original work of Jerome Robbins.

"Someone said to me, 'Jerome Robbins was God,'" De Keersmaeker told Vogue. "But there comes a point where you just have to trust there is space—and there is need—for a different choreographic answer to that music and to that story. Now I must figure out what that is."

West Side Story begins previews on December 10, 2019 and will officially open on February 6, 2020.