West Side Story

West Side Story is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The musical is based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

This musicale was shown at the Meralco Theatre, last September to October with Christian Bautista, Joanna Ampil, and Karylle Tatlong Hari as stars.

I was not supposed to watch the musicale anymore since I had no tickets for the show. I was only able to buy tickets a week before the play date and good thing I was still able to snag good seats. Thanks to ebay.ph, which never fails me with really nice deals. =) All of the orchestra seats were already sold out in Ticketworld, so you can just imagine my joy when I saw the ad in ebay! I was also really happy to have not disappointed Twinkle, who so wanted to watch the musicale because of Christian Bautista. =) A big thanks to Em and Kristian (ebay sellers) who made it possible. Twinkle and I were really meant to watch the play after all. :P

My take: I was soooo hoping to watch the play with Joanna Ampil as Maria. But then again, I expected otherwise because I was watching the matinee show. I just knew they would put Joanna in the gala one. I was hearing a lot of great raves about Joanna and knowing that she's West End's Lea Salonga made me want to see her in the play even more! When I first saw Karylle on stage, I just could not hide my disppointment, but when she started acting and singing, I was impressed. The Karylle that I used to see on TV was not even half the Karylle I watched in West Side Story. She portrayed the sweetness and innocence of Maria really well. She was an instant discovery to me. =) Well, same goes with Christian Bautista. I never liked him on TV. He even annoys me whenever I see him perform in ASAP, because I always found him OA ( and that's even in singing!). But when I watched him as Tony in the WSS, I saw him in a new and different light. I never thought I would ever get impressed with his singing but I did! I really felt the sincerity in him the whole time!

One thing that I realized and learned that day was: You will really be able to perform your best in something you love doing. During the play, I saw "passion" written all over Christian's face, and for that particular moment in my life...I think I became a Christian Bautista fan. =) I hope he'd do more plays in the future because it really suits him. =)

I loved the play overall. The song and dance numbers were really very entertaining. I just remembered getting sleepy at one point. I was not that sure if that was because I got bored or it was because their voices were so soothing as humming a lullaby. The play got exciting on the second half anyway, so falling aslep ang getting bored was never a problem after the intermission towards the end of the show.

The West Side Story is not showing in Manila anymore so you might find it weird for me to be still be posting this entry. But then again... "This is my blog, bakit ba?". hehe =P