The musical was adapted into a novel by Jewish author Irving Shulman. West Side Story is famous for its musical numbers, which is perhaps why the book was very short. Irving Shulman is the author of West Side Story (4.12 avg rating, 19007 ratings, 210 reviews, published 1961), Harlow (2.80 avg rating, 101 ratings, 18 r. In Jewish tradition, the shofar’s sound is a call to action so it’s quite fitting that the same notes are used to tell the story, the symbolism is apparent in the songs. According to reports, the three notes become a motif throughout the musical, appearing again in Something’s Coming, Maria and Cool. It’s no coincidence that the opening notes in West Side Story sound a lot like a shofar blasting tekiah. It was playwright Arthur Laurents who thought this idea was a bit too similar to the play Abie’s Irish Rose and had been ‘done’ too many times before.Īt the time, Manhattan’s Puerto Rican community was growing significantly so it made sense to shift the story to Manhattan’s West Side. The story goes that Maria would have actually been a Holocaust survivor and the conflict was to take place between Pesach and Easter. It may not come as a shock that the original working title of the musical was “East Side Story”, focusing on the rivalry between Jewish and Catholic groups in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
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