Search - Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim :: West Side Story (1993 UK Revival Cast - Highlights - Madacy Release)

A dead ringer for the real thing

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/09/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One would expect a British revival of West Side Story to be all wrong--the slighest Britishness in the accents would be ruinous. This excellent revival overcomes that obstacles, with ZJets and Sharks doing the damnedest to sound like dead ringers for the original Broadway cast. Only Paul Manuel as Tony dips into a Cockney accent, yet he has a great voice, better in fact than anyone who's sung Tony since Larry Kert fifty years ago. Tinuke Olafimihan is a light lyric soprano, a bit tremulous and unesteady as Maria, but no more so than Carol Lawrence. She, too, excels any rival in the various competitors to the original cast album. Thrown in a great Anita and fine orchestral work, and the result is a dark horse in the West Side Story race."