Forget light comedy. Forget the cotton candy of "Gigi" and the cartoon quality of "Annie."

With "West Side Story", Music Theatre of Wichita gets down to some serious business. This is more opera than musical theater, with tragedy, grand themes and darkness pervading the show.

Which is not to say that the show is bleak or depressing. On the contrary, it's a morality play that, in a more perfect world, would spur audiences into action to correct the social ills laid out on the stage.

The social ills of "West Side Story", unfortunately, are even more prevalent today than they were in 1957 when the play opened on Broadway. Fistfights have been abandoned in favor of drive-by shootings. In that sense, "West Side Story" and its turf war between the Sharks and Jets could seem almost charmingly antiquated, except for the ultimate consequences: three young men dead, three girlfriends grieving, three families devastated.

Director Mark Madama allows the drama to play itself out in a well-paced 2 1/2 hours that feel rich and full. Madama has cast the show exceptionally well, from his lead lovers, Matt Bogart as Tony and Kristi Peterson as Maria, to secondary but still memorable characters, including Carolanne Marano as Anybodys, Brian Hauserman as Baby John and Timothy W. Robu as Lt. Schrank.

Bogart's voice is silken and youthful, earning him an extended opening- night wave of applause on his first solo, "Something's Coming," and he holds up his end of the duets nicely with the operatically trained Peterson, whose voice has the capability to raise goosebumps.

Their counterpoints are the intense Bernardo and his back-sassing girlfriend Anita. Debra M. Walton as Anita embodies the Puerto Rican feeling with sympathy rather than caricature. Mark Esposito's Bernardo is thoroughly charismatic and demonstrates a dancer's economy of movement; Esposito also is associate choreographer, with Linda Goodrich, in creating the show's lavish and luscious dance sequences. The high-octane mambo in "The Dance at the Gym" is thrilling. Michael Gruber is a mite too handsome and nice-guyish to be threatening as the thuggish Riff, leader of the Jets, but his dancing is top-notch.

The Sharks-Jets action and the Tony-Maria love affair are played out against J. Branson's urban landscape of chain-link fencing, battered doorways and front stoops. Scenery seemed to move in a somewhat clunky fashion on opening night, and at least one prop, the pistol that figures in Tony's death at the end, literally provoked giggles from the audience.

Conductor David S. Briskin keeps Leonard Bernstein's complex and haunting score right on target; the work Briskin put into rehearsing with the dancers shows up onstage in subtle movements that perfectly reflect the music.


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