The 1957 musical (book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Steven Sondheim) continues to delight and provoke audiences. Based loosely of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it portrays the rivalry between two 1950's New York City street gangs, one Anglo, the other Puerto Rican. As timely now as it was when first produced, it demonstrates how prejudice and poverty combine to produce tragedy.
