{"id":244084,"date":"2010-12-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/timeless-musical-starts-year-off-right\/"},"modified":"2010-12-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T08:00:00","slug":"timeless-musical-starts-year-off-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/timeless-musical-starts-year-off-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Timeless musical starts year off right"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Timeless<\/a>
Michelle Aravena stars as the feisty Anita and Ali Ewoldt stars as Maria in the upcoming Broadway San Diego musical, "West Side Story." (Photo by Joan Marcus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Theatre Critic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Area musical theater lovers have a prime time to start the New Year off on the right foot when Broadway San Diego presents the national tour of Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim\u2019s 1957 hit musical, \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d at the Civic Theatre January 4-9. It\u2019s the updated 2009 Broadway version for which Lin Manuel-Miranda (\u201cIn the Heights\u201d) translated some of the lyrics into Spanish.<\/p>\n

Laurents, now 92, staged the new Broadway production, which began previews at Manhattan\u2019s Palace Theatre February 23, 2009, received critical acclaim and recouped its $14 million investment after only thirty weeks. For the tour, Laurents\u2019 direction is recreated by David Saint, his associate director on Broadway. Laurents wrote the original book, with 25-year-old Stephen Sondheim writing lyrics for composer Leonard Bernstein. The musical score contains such hits as \u201cMaria,\u201d \u201cSomewhere,\u201d \u201cI Feel Pretty,\u201d \u201cA Boy Like That,\u201d and \u201cTonight.\u201d Jerome Robbins\u2019 original choreography is reproduced by Joey McKneely. The cast album won the 2010 Grammy Award for best musical show album early last year.<\/p>\n

Michelle Aravena, seen at the Old Globe in \u201cThe First Wives Club,\u201d returns to San Diego to portray the show\u2019s spitfire Anita. A native of Connecticut, she grew up watching the 1961 film of \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d \u201cI danced around my living room before I even knew what I was watching,\u201d she said by phone from Los Angeles, where the show played the Pantages Theatre. \u201cI just remember the woman in the purple dress (Rita Moreno as Anita).\u201d<\/p>\n

Aravena began dance lessons at 3, singing lessons at 9, and performed in community theater after her dance teacher, BeverlyLegte (who never misses an opening), asked her if she wanted to be on the stage. Aravena began working professionally at age 9 and got her Equity card at 16. When she made her New York debut in a show at Lincoln Center (she was 11), and her Chilean immigrant father and her Italian-American mother took turns driving her forth and back to the city. She did her homework and ate meals in the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very dedicated to getting me where I needed to be,\u201d said Aravena. \u201cThey worked two or three jobs each to support what we wanted to do. Now it\u2019s kind of nice because we\u2019re all making a living doing what we love.\u201d Her younger sister, also a dancer, runs a performing arts school in Brewster, NY, and her brother has his own restaurant in Danbury, Conn.<\/p>\n

Aravena believes that by giving the Puerto Rican Sharks more Spanish, Laurents made them more specific and authentic than they were before. Certainly they are edgier and more believable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWest Side Story\u201d is one of the most poignant romances since Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cRomeo and Juliet,\u201d on which it is based. The plot concerns the territorial wars of the fictional 1950s gangs, the Sharks (kids of Puerto Rican immigrants)
\nand the English speaking Jets. A Jet named Tony (Kyle Harris) falls in love with Maria (Ali Ewoldt), whose brother Bernardo (German Santiago) is leader of the Sharks. Anita (Aravena) is Bernardo\u2019s girlfriend and Maria\u2019s best friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the shows I\u2019ve ever seen, ever done, ever heard about, this is the ultimate,\u201d said Aravena. \u201cEverything comes together to make perfection.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWEST SIDE STORY\u201d<\/strong> PERFORMANCE:<\/strong> Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n


\nTIMES:<\/strong> Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
\nFriday at 8 p.m.
\nSaturday at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.:
\n
\nASL interpreted performance<\/strong> at 2 p.m.
\nSunday at 1 p.m. & 6 p.m.
\n
\nOpen-Captioned performance<\/strong> at 1 p.m.
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n

DONDE:<\/strong> San Diego Civic Theatre, 3rd and B Street, downtown San Diego<\/p>\n

TICKETS:<\/strong> Start at $20; Tickets on sale now.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Theatre Critic Area musical theater lovers have a prime time to start the New Year off on the right foot when Broadway San Diego presents the national tour of Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim\u2019s 1957 hit musical, \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d at the Civic Theatre January 4-9. It\u2019s the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Timeless musical starts year off right","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}