We’re so rife with reboots and remakes today that it can take a moment to gauge just what Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” is. It isn’t a papered-over modernizing or a thinly disguised retread. It’s a feat of reconstruction. Spielberg, Tony Kushner and Steven Sondheim have taken the original play and reworked it from the inside, burrowing into the DNA of “West Side Story” and its characters to recast, reconsider, deepen and clarify one of the 20th century’s most iconic musicals.
Source: Review: Steven Spielberg’s rousing ‘West Side Story’ revival