West Side Story

West Side Story is a musical conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, the story is set in the mid-1950s on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, then a multiracial, blue-collar neighborhood. The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The Sharks, who are recent migrants from Puerto Rico, and the Jets, who are white, vie for dominance of the neighborhood, and the police try to keep order.