The extensive changes that Arthur Laurents made in the new Broadway revival of West Side Story (about which I wrote here) have inspired me to write a “Sightings” column for The Wall Street Journal about creative artists who decide to tinker with their early works. Why not leave well enough alone? Was it mere retrospective perfectionism that led Igor Stravinsky to reorchestrate The Firebird and Petrushka–or did he have baser motives? And did Henry James really improve his novels when he revised them for the New York Edition of his collected works? I speculate about all these examples and a few more to boot in today’s Journal. Pick up a paper and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
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The prologue from the 1961 film version of West Side Story, choreographed by Jerome Robbins and directed by Robbins and Robert Wise:
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
