[It] is the impeccable taste of the music, the lyrics and the story that seems so astonishing in "West Side Story." Given two lots of hoodlums somewhere on the gritty pavements of New York, how could the authors of the show endow them with so much common humanity, and raise their hopes and troubles to the level of literature?

But that is what "West Side Story" manages to do. The world of the Jets and the Sharks is full of violence and danger. The amenities of civilization seem unmanly and bogus to these tense youths, who are seething with fear and hatred. Nothing could be uglier than the rumble that leaves two victims dead in the shadows of a summer night.

Somehow Mr. Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist, and Arthur Laurents, author of the book, have suggested another dimension. The beauty is graceless, but it is there, somewhere...