Somethings Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination is a book by Theatre critic for the Seattle Times Misha Berson. Berson has spent many years writing about the theatre getting her first start in the San Francisco theatre scene before moving onto Seattle in the early 1990s. Berson has already written several books on the theatre including 'Between Worlds: Contemporary Asian-American Plays' and 'The San Francisco Stage' and has also contributed to several National Theatre journals in the USA. Berson has also taught courses at the University of Washington and for San Francisco State.
This book is a critical approach to perhaps one of the most popular musicals of the past century West Side Story. West Side Story is a musical that many people will know either from having seen some sort of production of it, school, community or professional, or from having seen the excellent film adaptation. Based upon the story of Romeo and Juliet the piece follows an American boy Tony who is from a Polish background falling in love with a Puerto Rican Immigrant named Maria. Set against the backdrop of 1950s inner city New York this great love story gets mixed up in the street gang politics of Tony's old group the Jets against Maria's brothers gang the Sharks. It is a wonderful twist to Shakespeare's text and allows a lot of humour and energy to be put into the story. It is one of my favourite musicals because of the excellent soundtrack and the dance sequences which are just phenomenal. This musical influenced a lot of choreographers and dancers and without the work of Jerome Robbins in the piece Michael Jackson may not have come up with many of his now legendary dance routines. It is for these reasons that Berson has written this book as a critical analysis of the plot, the way it is staged, the film adaptation and much more with an aim for fans of the play to read but also as an important resource for potential producers and directors of the play. I think it would be something if I was going to do West Side Story I might take out from a Library or see how cheap it was on Amazon because although it looks good on paper I don't know if I would read a book all about just one play that wasn't say for example just a cliffs notes sort of thing. Still it could be very good and anyone who wishes to pre-order it now from Amazon should go here. It isn't released until May 2011 but the american edition comes out in November and to pre-order that one you should follow this link.
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