West Side Story based loosely on "West Side Story" and adapting parts of the musical's music and lyrics, was performed a total of more than 500 times in Miami Beach, Florida, Stockholm, Gran Canaria and Los Angeles. The show lampoons the musical's tragic love story, and also lip-synching and drag shows. 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
West Side Story (soundtrack) movie score (on "Kenton's West Side Story") also winning a Grammy in 1962 for "Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album" further bolstering the popularity of the movie and soundtrack. In the United States, it was the best-selling album of the 1960s, certifying three times platinum by the RIAA on November 21, 1986. Though the album was released just a few years after the release of the original broadway cast recording, it is according to "Broadway Babies" preferred by some to the earlier version both sentimentally, as the film succeeded in establishing the musical as a "popular masterpiece", and musically, as it