"When I listened to 'West Side Story' again, when I read it again, I discovered this very brutal world, a divided world where people search for unity by exclusion of the other—the person who is not like you."

"It seemed as if it were written yesterday," said Ivo van Hove, the director of the new Broadway version of "West Side Story," quoted in "How Ivo Van Hove Remixed West Side Story for the 21st Century" (Vogue). I was reading that this morning because it was discussed in "New Broadway 'West Side Story' to Kick Up a Fuss: No Intermission, Famous Song and Ballet Cut, Video Projections for Sets" (Roger Friedman's Showbiz 311), which is linked at Drudge.

Back to Vogue:

[T]he show will be trimmed to run without an intermission by cutting the “Somewhere” ballet and—gasp—“I Feel Pretty.” The changes have not only been approved by the creators’ estates but, in fact, reflect the original desires of Sondheim, still going strong at 89, who candidly confessed in his 2010 book Finishing the Hat that he had long been uncomfortable with some of the lyrics of the latter song. Van Hove isn’t streamlining to be perverse; the show’s action takes place over 48 hours, and he wants the production to capture that race against time. “I want to make a juggernaut,” he says. “You feel that these people are running toward their death and there’s no escape from it.”

An intermission can serve some good purposes, giving people a chance to discuss the show and share interpretations and maybe compare notes and decide to get the hell out of there and maybe to help each other appreciate what's going on. You know, something like this:



But I like when a show has no intermission. Movies rarely have an intermission, and we are used to plunging straight through the story, keeping the momentum. Recently, I saw a play that had no intermission. It was the George Bernard Shaw play "Man of Destiny" (at the American Players Theater). Running time, an hour and a half. It was great.

But what about cutting "I Feel Pretty"?



Aside from the declaration that she feels "gay," this song and dance strikes me as very of the moment. Maria seems like she's got an Instagram account. Maybe the problem is that the audience isn't going to see Maria as delightfully hopeful and innocent, someone we don't want to see hurt, but a narcissistic fool who deserves a harsh dose of reality.

I just learned that the original "Hippy Hippy Shake" was not by The Swinging Blue Jeans...

... but by Chan Romero:



Here's the Beatles version.

As noted in the meandering update to the Megyn Kelly post, below, the Chan Romero recording was the first song where we heard the word "hippie" (spelled "hippy" on the label).

The first in-print use of the word, according to the OED, is in the 1953 novel "Night Light," by Douglass Wallop: "Man, I really get a bellyful of these would be hippies."



According to Amazon, that's "A novel about a man's search back through a dead killer's life for motive in the world of jazz by the author best known for his baseball novel ’The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.”"



Hey, that seems to augurate that today is the day the Yankees lose the pennant! It's either win or lose today, the 7th game of the American League Championship Series.

I thought I'd never heard of "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant," but it's the novel that got made into the musical "Damn Yankees."

Baseball lovers everywhere can identify with Joe Boyd, a die-hard Washington Senators fan who puts his soul in hock to help them wrest the pennant away from the hated, all-conquering Yankees. Transformed by the sulfurous Mr. Applegate's satanic magic into twenty-two-year-old phenom Joe Hardy, he leads the hapless Senators in a torrid late-season pursuit of the men in pinstripes. Joe has until September 21st before the deal becomes final―and eternal. With the luscious temptress Lola to distract him, he'll have a hell of a time wriggling out of the bargain...

Here's the trailer for the 1958 movie they made out of the stage show:



That's Tab Hunter in the lead role. Remember when movie stars looked like this:



That's Tab with Natalie Wood at the 1956 Oscars. Warner Brothers was teaming them up as co-stars at the time. The 1956 movie was "The Burning Hills":



Massive pulchritude!