West Side Story West Side Story West Side Story is a musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of
West Side Story was originally intended for Cunegonde in "Candide". The music of "Gee, Officer Krupke" was pulled from the Venice scene in "Candide". Laurents explained the style that the creative team finally decided on: The show was nearly complete in the fall of 1956, but almost everyone on the creative team needed to fulfill other commitments first. Robbins was involved with "Bells Are Ringing", then Bernstein with "Candide", and in January 1957 "A Clearing in the Woods", Laurents' latest play, opened and quickly closed. When a backers' audition failed to raise any money for "West Side Story" late in the spring of