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 as Maria, and again in 2009, The Austrian Bregenz Festival presented "West Side Story" in a German translation by Marcel Prawy in 2003 and 2004, directed by Francesca Zambello, followed by a German tour. A French language adaptation, translated by Philippe Gobeille, opened in Montreal, Quebec, in March 2008. A Philippine version played in 2008 at the Meralco Theater. It featured Christian Bautista as Tony, Karylle and Joanna Ampil as Maria. Also in 2008, an adaptation played in Portugal, directed by Filipe La Féria, with the name "West Side Story – Amor Sem Barreiras", in the Politeama Theater, in Lisbon,