West Side Story, Handa Opera on the Harbour. At Mrs Macquarie’s Point, Sydney, until April 21. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

I can confidently pronounce this to be the most exciting West Side Story I’ve seen since the original one that opened at the Tivoli in 1961.

A slightly tweaked revival of director Francesca Zambello’s 2019 production of the work for Handa Opera on the Harbour, it was spectacular not just for the idiosyncratic, unforgettable music of Leonard Bernstein and the tricky lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, but because the way Jerome Robbins’ choreography ate up the wide-open spaces of the outdoor stage.

Set against the lights of Sydney Harbour and CBD, Brian Thompson’s set featuring the Statue of Liberty still works, evoking gritty West Side New York through its real-life setting on Sydney Harbour.

But Zambello’s production is cleverly able to pull focus on the action of the play and its famous Romeo and Juliet plot, so there is intimacy, too.

The tight cast of principals features notable cameos from Joe Clements as Officer Krupke and veteran vaudeville performer, Wayne Scott Kermond, who as Doc combines wry commentary with a sense of the overarching tragedy.

All eyes were on Canberra-born Billy Bourchier as Tony, with hyperbolical exclamations of “the best Tony ever” all around – you could see where they were coming from.

From the moment he started singing his opening number, “Something’s Coming”, filling the stage with his sense of anticipation, it was clear that Bourchier is a powerful interpreter of songs who can reach the high notes and responding to the nuances in Sondheim’s lyrics while seeming natural and unaffected.

His show-stopper, Maria, was a shoe-in after that.

As his counterpart, Maria, Nina Korbe, albeit a convincing actor and dancer, proved less satisfying. Her rich operatic soprano conveyed no sense of the innocence of Maria, overpowering the lyrics at times. Zambello, like many other directors, gave her the song Somewhere, originally sung by a disembodied voice offstage, allowing her to have a showstopper.

In the role of Anita, Kimberley Hodgson was unremarkable, lacking the power and ferocity of this part and occasionally, evident in the number America, less than comprehensible.

Bernardo and Riff were also indifferently delineated by Manuel Stark Santos and Patrick Whitbread, but this could be explained by the exceptional primacy of dance in their scenes.

No wonder West Side Story is so fiendishly hard for amateur companies to pull off.

One of the very greatest musicals in the American repertoire, if gratuitously reinterpreted, it can appear outdated, but by the end of  Zambello’s clear and true production, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.