The Musical as Drama

This is a conventional ending, with the double rhyme on “star/
are” and “right/tonight” tying the final A together and con-
necting its conclusion back to the bridge even as it manages to
end on the first word of the song, “tonight.”
What is real about Tony and Maria in this song is not their
identity as young Polish boy and young Puerto Rican girl but
their ability to sing this song. They are able to stop talking and
do something different, something that requires unusual tal-
ent, something that has a different structure of feeling to it, al-
though this structure is the same closed stanzaic format that
young love has been sung about thousands of times in popular
tunes. They are able to transform the standard, able to make it
their own, and this is what young lovers all want to do, in or
out of the theatre. Out of the theatre the standard is different,
marriage perhaps. Inside the theatre, it will often be an AABA
tune.
But at the end of West Side Story, all this they have lost.
The grief is earth-bound prose, a fragment of song, nothing
more. “Te adoro, Anton.” It is powerful, for the music that is
sung earlier can’t be sung now. This is what Banfield means
by the denial of song. To enlarge Maria into song at the end
would be to highlight her role, concentrating the drama on
her performing self. Always this story has balanced the two
lovers: Romeo andJuliet. The musical changes the ending
by keeping Maria alive, but it preserves balance by shifting it
to the two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, as they join into a
procession and carry Tony’s body away. There is underscor-
ing for the procession. It is “Somewhere,” a grim reminder of
the fantasy these people have danced about getting free of the
tenements. What is real is the combination of elements: the
orchestra recalling the fantasy of freedom, the gangs join-
ing into formal procession, Maria forced to become mature,
and the musical selves of the young lovers, silenced now. It
is real in the sense of being convincing, and it is convinc-
ing because so many distinct elements are held in balance
together.

58 CHAPTER THREE