The Great White Way is a little dimmer today as it mourns Arthur Laurents, the 93-year-old Brooklyn-born playwright and director who helped bring the world such classics as West Side Story, Gypsy, Rope, The Turning Point and The Way We Were. He died of complications of pneumonia in his Manhattan home. more ›

At 91, Arthur Laurents seems endowed with better acuity, instincts and vitality than most Americans one-fourth his age. At least, that's the impression one draws from his mostly exhilarating revival of West Side Story, which Laurents has brought back to Broadway somewhere in between reviving an award-winning of production of Gypsy and skiing in St. Moritz. The West Side Story that opened Thursday night at the gigantic old Palace Theater is traditional where it matters—faithfully recreating Jerome Robbins's transporting choreography—and unorthodox where it doesn't; some scenes, for example, are performed almost entirely in Spanish without supertitles. more ›