If we’re being honest, West Side Story has seemed a little out of date for quite a while. Rather than having the rebellious teenagers of the 1950s represented through rock & roll, the musical about Puerto Ricans newly arrived to New York City being targeted by earlier immigrants had Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent dissonant score coupled with Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics that capture the collision of rhythms and impulses. The book by Arthur Laurents is lean but filled with lines like, “Ya done good, Buddy boy” and “Thanks, Daddy-O.” Jerome Robbins’ riveting choreography of stylized street ballets – along with its finger snaps – incorporated vernacular dance and became a cliché of “cool” that’s its own kind of corny. So how and, more importantly, why do you re-stage the musical on Broadway in 2020? For Belgian director Ivo van Hove – an outsider who has an uncanny ability to see past the tired tropes of classics and focus on their essence – the ethnic tensions and tale of a divided society at the heart of West Side Story needed to be dismantled and reimagined for our current sensibility. And after years of preparation and millions of dollars, he has done it brilliantly. This new staging of the classic – with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s powerful new choreography and Jan Versweyveld’s stunning minimal scenic and lighting design – is fantastic. In fact, this feels as if it’s actually an adaptation of both the stage musical and the wildly popular 1961 film starring Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer. Because let’s be real: That’s the version of Tony and Maria most people have stuck in their head. And it’s what audiences are comparing any staging to: whether it’s in a high school auditorium or in the 1,700-seat Broadway Theatre. The large cast of young dancers and actors in the latest incarnation are recognizable as denizens of the 21st century. When we first see them, they enter a bare stage and form a line at its edge as an unseen camera slowly pans over their faces, which are projected on a monumental hi-def screen that fills the entire back wall behind them.