A NEW Broadway production of West Side Story is dropping the heroine Maria’s song I Feel Pretty.
Yet if the idea was to make a ‘woke’ West Side Story for a new generation, dismissing I Feel Pretty as a shallow evocation of a woman in love, some members of that new generation were cross. It was ‘one of the few songs in that show to feature all women’, one protester wrote on Twitter.
Composer and playwright Brin Solomon, 28, said that modern stage productions were now ‘only interested in seeing a person of colour if that person is living trauma on the stage. This is a moment where a Puerto Rican girl gets to feel loved and good about herself and special, at the front of the theatre. To get rid of that is a choice, as they say.’
Would the new version of West Side Story appeal to you? Discuss!
