When Encore Musical Theatre Company co-founder Dan Cooney, in a pre-show speech, emphatically warned the crowd at West Side Story’s opening night to keep the aisles clear (“They’re 20,” he joked, referring to the cast’s youth), it was for good reason.

Indeed, the production’s performers often bounded onto the stage, swung (or hung, or twirled) from the set’s poles and bars, and prowled the theater’s aisles as if they were the streets of Manhattan.

That’s where this classic American musical theater riff on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet takes place, of course, in the summer of 1957. Instead of feuding families, West Side Story focuses on two territorial teen gangs (the white working-class Jets and the Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks) who regularly fight to “own” the local territory. But when a former Jet named Tony (Conor Jordan) locks eyes with young, Puerto Rican Maria (Daniela Rodriguez Del Bosque) at a dance, the two fall passionately, impetuously in love, despite their differences, and set a series of events into motion that will alter not just the path of their own lives, but those of everyone around them.

Despite its iconic, instantly recognizable music (Leonard Bernstein) and lyrics (Stephen Sondheim), book (Arthur Laurents), and choreography (Jerome Robbins, re-created in Encore’s production by Deanna Aguinaga-Whyte), West Side Story (directed here by Michael Berry) is not a show we have lots of opportunities to see performed live—in part, because this classic American musical demands a lot from the many, many young artists it takes to stage a production.

Yet this is the Dexter theater company's second go at it, having previously staged the show in Encore’s original, smaller black-box space on Broad Street seven years ago. One carryover from that production is Jordan (as Tony), whose first number (“Something’s Coming”) was both a gorgeous vocal-yearning knockout and the first occasion I thought this now-more-mature actor may have aged out of this role—an observation that grew louder in my head during scenes he shared with the wildly youthful looking ingenue, Rodriguez Del Bosque.

Plus, for all the benefits and opportunities afforded Encore by its relocation to this bigger, more versatile space—including the liberal use of those aisles—there are costs, too. In the case of West Side Story, a sense of tighter physical limitations (and thus claustrophobia) often helps ramp up the show’s central conflict. If you feel like these teenagers truly have no choice but to stare each other down, day in and day out, in an already overcrowded space, you process, at a cellular level, the fight-or-flight impulse they’re experiencing. When the show’s world feels more open and expansive, the stakes are inevitably dampened.

Finally, while music director R. Mackenzie Lewis’ orchestra sounds terrific, they are hidden away from the audience, causing the score to have a bit less intensity and immediacy than it otherwise might.

That said, there’s an awful lot of talent on Encore’s stage, including a number of U-M musical theater students. Ian Rubin, for one, powerfully commands the stage as Riff, exuding both swagger and a veiled insecurity about Tony pulling away from the Jets; and Mariangeli Collado, playing Anita, provided the production’s most emotionally harrowing moment, as the Jets taunt and harass her at Doc’s store, post-rumble. Collado’s progression, from trying to push through and fulfill her mission to curling up into a ball, took my breath away.

Encore’s performers hit all the notes and moves that many of us know as musical theater scripture at this point, and executing them well (it’s a workout!) is no small feat—nor is assembling an ethnically aligned cast for these roles, which Encore has also done—so I was left puzzling over why I wasn’t feeling as much as I did in that scene at Doc’s throughout the show. I’m still not entirely sure.

Shane Cinal’s urban playground scenic design, with its Coke bottle neon backdrop, works, as do Rossella Human’s costumes (I particularly appreciated the dresses for the dance); Joseph R. Walls’ lighting design appropriately sets the mood and effectively guides your gaze, and thanks to Chris Goosman and Jasper Watson, the sound is clear and well-balanced.

It all leads me to wonder: Is it simply too hard, in this particular political moment, for me to find the joy in West Side Story? Ultimately, the show’s about immigrants, and the racism and resentment regularly aimed at them—painful topics we’re reading about again daily in our news feeds. (As I write this, a standoff between anti-ICE protestors in Los Angeles and the National Guard, called in by our president, is ongoing.)

So perhaps—beautiful score and dancing notwithstanding—my emotionally muted response to Encore’s West Side Story has far less to do with production choices than it does with our country’s.

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music. 

"West Side Story" runs through July 6 at Encore Musical Theatre Company, 7714 Ann Arbor Street, Dexter. Visit theencoretheatre.org for tickets, showtimes, and more info.