Two years to the month after the diversity-focused Teatro San Diego made its debut with a streaming version of “Songs for a New World,” the company is back this week with its biggest project to date: an ambitious production of “West Side Story” at the City Heights Performance Annex.
The staging by co-directors Michelle Alves and Amanda Rivera Torres, which opened Friday and continues through Sunday, was offered free to the public. As a result, all of the tickets were quickly snapped up weeks ago. That’s a shame because this passionate and thoughtfully staged “West Side Story” deserves to be seen by a much-larger audience.
The classic 1961 musical by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins is challenging for even long-established, bigger-budget companies to pull off because of its heavy dance demands, large cast and orchestra needs.
William Lanham, center, leads a dance scene in Teatro San Diego’s “West Side Story.”
(Courtesy of Sarah Marie Hernandez)
But Teatro has an ace in the hole. Company founder and executive director Julio Catano toured nationally and internationally in the company of “West Side Story,” and with his tour castmate, Hannah Balagot, has faithfully taught this show’s young cast all of Robbins’ original choreography.
To be fair, this isn’t the full-scale production you’d see in a national tour. The scenery is minimal, the music is recorded, the singers perform without microphones and the juvenile gangs at the heart of the “Romeo and Juliet”-inspired story have just five or six members.
But the pluses of this production more than make up for these limitations. As the young lovers Tony and Maria, Mason J. Ballard and Ina Lelevier have pure and beautiful singing voices, great chemistry together and the sweet, hopeful innocence their characters require.
The lack of an orchestra and amplification allows the beautiful and rarely heard vocal harmonies coached by co-music directors Jerrica and Matt Ignacio to shine through. And in this production, audiences get to see the musical’s original dream ballet scene, which is cut from most productions.
Another big plus of this production is that most of the actors are very close in age to the teen characters they play, so it feels more realistic. And best of all is the production’s diversity. The majority of artists, both onstage and on the creative and production team, are people of color, and the cast also includes three nonbinary performers, plus an actor in a wheelchair in a principal role.
Ina Lelevier as Maria and Mason J. Ballard as Tony in Teatro San Diego’s “West Side Story.”
(Courtesy of Sarah Marie Hernandez)
Some of the cast standouts are the fiery Mikaela Rae Macias as Anita, who stepped in for the first weekend of shows for an ailing Maya Sofia; Tyler Tafolla as the rough-edged Jets gang leader Riff; William Lanham as the boyish Jets member Baby John; Enrique Arana as Sharks leader Bernardo; dream ballet dancer Steffi Carter; and Josiah Lopez as Chino.
Lighting designer and Teatro co-founder/artistic director Kevin “Blax” Burroughs brings color and vibrancy to the annex space, while Eliza Vedar designed sound and Emily Carter designed costumes.
Teatro San Diego gave away all the tickets to this production in the hope that community members would come and embrace their mission and reward it with donations. Without that support, this company might not be able to continue producing work that represents — onstage and backstage — all of San Diego’s diverse population.
‘West Side Story’
When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday
Where: City Heights Performance Annex, 3795 Fairmount Ave., San Diego
Tickets: Free, but all tickets are reserved. Check website for availability.
Online: teatrosandiego.org