West Side Story was terribly important because of the style of the dancing and the gangs of New York.
It was an amazing adventure, it was my dream to be in an American musical... I really hope you are going to love what you are going to see.
I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?
I love the American musical for the simplicity of emotion that gets expressed.
I want to do an American 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg.'
You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.
Questions about political theatre always overlook America's most powerful and effective political theatre, which is always thriving: the American musical. The politics is conservative but, to my mind, effective and insidious.
To me, 'Show Boat' was the first American musical, the first to have the real texture of this country.
