Customer Reviews

West Side Story (1993 UK Revival Cast - Highlights - Madacy Release)

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I bought this recording after I had just completed a run of West Side Story, and was desperately looking for voices that recreated the magic of the show I had just performed in. Caroline O'Connor is a great Anita, but once more, this production has changed a lot of the original material in hopes, I think, of spicing things up and to present them in a new light, when the original material is flawless as it is. It is a new fresh sound, but nothing compared to the Original Broadway cast. And also, it seems that London productions always have a harder time with true New-York accents, or anything else that isn't British or Cockney. I wouldn't particularly recommend this recording, but it definitely is one of the better ones that was made of this fabulous show.

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.