["West Side Story"] is a bold new kind of musical theatre—a juke-box Manhattan opera. It is, to me, extraordinarily exciting. In it, the various fine skills of show business are put to new tests, and as a result a different kind of musical has emerged.

The story is, roughly, Shakespeare's recounting of the love and deaths of Romeo and Juliet. But the setting is today's Manhattan, and the manner of telling the story is a provocative and artful blend of music, dance and plot—and the music and the dancing are superb.

In this present-day version of the theatre's greatest romance, the Montagues and Capulets become young New York gangs, one native, the other Puerto Rican….

The music of "West Side Story" is by Leonard Bernstein, and it is superb….

The story, about the fundamentally innocent hoodlums of our town, is by Arthur Laurents, and it is...