West Side Story is a musical about Maria and Tony's love. The two fall in love almost instantly, just as R&J. There is even a scene where Tony goes to Maria's fire escape to talk to her after he first met her (shown below). Maria and Tony are from two different families in rival gangs, the jets and the sharks. Tony is the only one who dies, and he is killed by someone in a fight, but he wasn't fighting very hard since he thought Maria was dead, and wanted to die because he couldn't live without her. At the end, although Maria's body was still alive, something inside her died when Tony died in his arms. His death did, though, bring the Jets and Sharks together just like Romeo and Juliet want their families to do. In the 50's when this musical was made, I don't know if Laurents' purpose was to create a modern day R&J, but he did just that very successfully in the tear jerking West Side Story as anyone could see with the plot almost perfectly fitting that of the play by Shakespeare.
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