[6][7] In 1955, theatrical producer Martin Gabel was working on a stage adaptation of the James M. Cain novel Serenade, about an opera singer who comes to the realization he is homosexual, and he invited Laurents to write the book.

The two met at The Beverly Hills Hotel, and the conversation turned to juvenile delinquent gangs, a fairly recent social phenomenon that had received major coverage on the front pages of the morning newspapers due to a Chicano turf war.

Bernstein suggested they rework East Side Story and set it in Los Angeles, but Laurents felt he was more familiar with Puerto Ricans in the United States and Harlem than he was with Mexican Americans and Olvera Street.

He arrived in Hollywood to choreograph the dance sequences for the 1956 film The King and I, and he and Laurents began developing the musical while working on their respective projects, keeping in touch with Bernstein, who had returned to New York.

When the producer of The Painted Veil replaced Gardner with Eleanor Parker and asked Laurents to revise his script with her in mind, he backed out of the film, freeing him to devote all his time to the stage musical.

Bernstein had decided he needed to concentrate solely on the music, and he and Robbins had invited Betty Comden and Adolph Green to write the lyrics, but the team opted to work on Peter Pan instead.

[12] The original book Laurents wrote closely adhered to Romeo and Juliet, but the characters based on Shakespeare's Rosaline and the parents of the doomed lovers were eliminated early on.

Laurents felt that the building tension needed to be alleviated in order to increase the impact of the play's tragic outcome, so comic relief in the form of Officer Krupke was added to the second act.

Another song, "Kid Stuff", was added and quickly removed during the Washington, D.C., tryout when Laurents convinced the others it was helping tip the balance of the show into typical musical comedy.

[18] When a backers' audition failed to raise any money for West Side Story late in the spring of 1957, only two months before the show was to begin rehearsals, producer Cheryl Crawford pulled out of the project.

Bernstein was despondent, but Sondheim convinced his friend Hal Prince, who was in Boston overseeing the out-of-town tryout of the new George Abbott musical New Girl in Town, to read the script.

Robbins kept the cast members playing the Sharks and the Jets separate to discourage them from socializing with each other and reminded everyone of the reality of gang violence by posting news stories on the bulletin board backstage.

[29] Two rival teenage gangs,[30] the Jets (white Americans) and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans), struggle for control of their neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (Prologue).

The production was directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, and produced by Robert E. Griffith and Harold Prince, with lighting designed by Jean Rosenthal.

[36] The other notable cast members in the original production were: Riff: Michael Callan, A-Rab: Tony Mordente, Big Deal: Martin Charnin, Gee-Tar: Tommy Abbott, Chino: Jamie Sanchez, Rosalia: Marilyn Cooper, Consuela [sic]: Reri Grist, Doc: Art Smith and Francisca: Elizabeth Taylor.

The production's national tour was launched on July 1, 1959, in Denver and then played in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston.

Featured performers were George Chakiris, who won an Academy Award as Bernardo in the 1961 film version, as Riff, Marlys Watters as Maria, Don McKay as Tony, and Chita Rivera reprising her Broadway role as Anita.

It was directed and choreographed by Robbins, with the book scenes co-directed by Gerald Freedman; produced by Gladys Nederlander and Tom Abbott; Lee Theodore assisted in the choreography reproduction.

Other notable cast members included Brent Barrett as Diesel, Harolyn Blackwell as Francisca, Stephen Bogardus as Mouth Piece and Reed Jones as Big Deal.

[48][49][50] In August 2009, some of the lyrics for "A Boy Like That" ("Un Hombre Asi") and "I Feel Pretty" ("Me Siento Hermosa"), which were previously sung in Spanish in the revival, were changed back to the original English.

The cast included Shereen Pimentel as Maria, Isaac Cole Powell as Tony, Amar Ramasar as Bernardo, Thomas Jay Ryan as Lt. Schrank and Yesenia Ayala as Anita.

[66] Some theatergoers felt that the set turned the theatre into a cinema, but critic Charles McNulty argued that it wove technology into a multimedia "performance work that defies our usual vocabulary".

[64] The production also drew criticism for its casting of Ramasar, who had been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior and was fired from the New York City Ballet and suspended from Carousel, as well as the graphic staging of the Jets' assault and attempted rape of Anita which, together, "sends a message that women’s bodies are collateral damage in male artistic success".

[87] An international tour (2005–2010), directed and choreographed by Joey McKneely played in Tokyo, Paris, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, São Paulo, France, Taiwan, China, Italy, Rotterdam and Spain.

[92] In 2011, a Lima production was produced by "Preludio Asociación Cultural" with Marco Zunino as Tony, Rossana Fernández-Maldonado as Maria, Jesús Neyra as Bernardo, Tati Alcántara as Anita and Joaquín de Orbegoso as Riff.

[93] A Japanese production ran from November 2019 to January 2020, at the IHI Stage Around Tokyo, featuring a double cast with Mamoru Miyano and Shouta Aoi as Tony, and Kii Kitano and Rena Sasamoto as Maria, with Suzuko Mimori as Anita, Ryuji Kamiyama as Riff, and Masataka Nakagauchi as Bernardo.

Director, choreographer, and idea-man Jerome Robbins has put together, and then blasted apart, the most savage, restless, electrifying dance patterns we've been exposed to in a dozen seasons .... the show rides with a catastrophic roar over the spider-web fire-escapes, the shadowed trestles, and the plain dirt battlegrounds of a big city feud ... there is fresh excitement in the next debacle, and the next.

When the knives come out, and bodies begin to fly wildly through space under buttermilk clouds, the sheer visual excitement is breathtaking .... Mr. Bernstein has permitted himself a few moments of graceful, lingering melody: in a yearning "Maria", in the hushed falling line of "Tonight", in the wistful declaration of "I Have a Love".

It is fascinatingly tricky and melodically beguiling, and it marks the progression of an admirable composer ...Time magazine found the dance and gang warfare more compelling than the love story and noted that the show's "putting choreography foremost, may prove a milestone in musical-drama history".

... Robbins' energetic choreography and Bernstein's grand score accentuated the satiric, hard-edged lyrics of Sondheim, and Laurents' capture of the angry voice of urban youth.