Speaking in 1985 at a symposium about the creation of West Side Story, Jerome Robbins said he had wanted to see how far he, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents could go in bringing their “crafts and talents”, as he put it, to a musical.

“Why did we have to do it separately and elsewhere? Why did Lenny have to write an opera, Arthur a play, me a ballet? Why couldn’t we, in aspiration, try to bring our deepest talents together to the commercial theatre in this work? That was the true gesture of the show.”

Joining Robbins, Bernstein and Laurents at the symposium was Stephen Sondheim, who was asked to write lyrics after Bernstein realised the workload of composer-lyricist was too great. As Deborah Jowitt writes in her splendid biography of Robbins, Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (Simon and Schuster, 2004), Sondheim “spoke most eloquently of the blend of music, books, lyrics, dance”. As Sondheim put it, “No show had ever been staged … or conceived this way as a fluid piece which called on the poetic imagination of the audience”.

Erstwhile producer Cheryl Crawford noted that West Side Story had “very few of the customary Broadway values of comedy and splash with three killings and music leaning to opera”. She would have liked “more lightness and fun”. 

Crawford pulled out about five months before the Broadway opening in September, 1957. It wasn’t one of her best calls: the 1957 Broadway audience proved it had the poetic imagination to understand West Side Story, as have audiences in the six decades since.

Shakespeare squeezed the action of Romeo and Juliet into about four days. Updated to 1950s New York in West Side Story, everything happens in less than two. That’s all it takes for star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria to fall in love and fall victim to the enmity of their respective communities.

The urgency is thrilling. It’s summoned immediately by Bernstein’s exhilaratingly spiky music, it’s there in the muscular, extended dance sequences Robbins built into the structure and in the best of Sondheim’s lyrics as they take a direct route to what the heart wants. 

Laurents’s book was pared to the minimum during the show’s development, meaning much of West Side Story’s impact comes from these heightened, inextricably intertwined forms of expression. Just like opera really.

Dance is courtship, bonding and fighting. A click of a finger is an expression of cool, a summons or a dismissal. Brass, percussion and syncopation electrify the senses. (British critic Kenneth Tynan memorably described the score as sounding “as if Puccini and Stravinsky had gone on a roller coaster ride into the precincts of modern jazz”.)

West Side Story was rightly a huge hit for Opera Australia in 2019 and it’s great to see it back on OA’s vast floating stage on Sydney Harbour. Set designer Brian Thomson’s neglected cityscape still works its dark magic and musical director Guy Simpson returns too, leading a 28-piece band in a scorching account of the score. 

Francesco Zambello’s production, revived by Eric Sean Fogel and with revival choreography by Kiira Schmidt Carper, has rough edges that weren’t there last time but this is a show that can bear it.

The women’s big showpiece, America, was under par but the scrappiness at the dance hall, where the New York-born Jets and Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks are fruitlessly exhorted to make nice with one another, felt right. 

It showcased the mindless aggression of young men who judge themselves by loyalty to the group. As one kid says to another at one point, their bond lasts “from sperm to worm” but at the same time they just live in the moment – restless, careless and hungry for sensation.

Set against this roiling pool of testosterone, the attraction between Maria (Nina Korbe) and Tony (Billy Bourchier) is an oasis of light and calm. 

There’s no higher praise for Korbe than to say she scores A+ in the I Feel Pretty test. Maria’s Act II opener is something of an embarrassment but Korbe makes us believers with a delightful mix of self-awareness and sweet pleasure. 

Korbe is starting to move up the operatic ladder (she’s a Young Artist with Opera Queensland) and Maria is a wonderful part for her. She’s a natural who looks the part effortlessly and brings a gleaming, expressive soprano to the show’s loveliest songs, including the imperishable Tonight and Somewhere.

Tony is arguably a trickier role. It’s surprising to hear the Jets speak of his importance to their gang, particularly given Bourchier’s eager boyishness. He may not convince as a punk but his fresh, light tenor is enormously appealing.

Kimberley Hodgson’s tough, realistic Anita completes a fine trio of leads. Anita is pivotal to the drama and Hodgson more than made up for opening night’s fuzzily focused America with her searing A Boy Like That.

West Side Story is unfortunately no snapshot of the past. The Jets’ attack on Anita that precipitates Tony’s death is more shocking than ever, as is the racism spat at the Puerto Ricans. 

Zambello’s ending, in which she withholds the reconciliation flagged in the show’s synopsis, sadly seems just about right.

West Side Story ends on April 21.

A version of this review first appeared in The Australian on March 24.