ATLRetro

Name:  Cary Tedder
Age: 24
Hometown: Marietta
Retro Job: Performer, Snowboy, and Tony (understudy), WEST SIDE STORY
Location/Dates:  The Fox Theatre, Tues. Jan. 25-Mon. Jan. 31
Favorite Retro Movie: SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Favorite Retro Performer: Gene Kelly
Favorite Retro Show:  ON THE TOWN

WEST SIDE STORY. Been there, done that, you may feel inclined to say if you grew up seeing the movie on TV most likely in the wrong aspect ratio with its dynamic dance moves chopped and cropped. Or maybe you were lucky enough to catch a big-screen revival probably at the Fox Theatre if you grew up in Atlanta. So like many, including Cary Tedder, you may not have been blown away.

But flashback to the original stage play bursting onto the Broadway stage back in 1957, which critics were declaring it revolutionary from Jerome Robbins’ dynamic choreography and Leonard Bernstein’s powerful score to its controversial setting in the harsh, angry reality of urban street gangs and racism. The recent Broadway revival, now on tour via Broadway Across America, tries to recapture that sense of danger, according to Tedder, who plays “Snowboy”—one of the Jets—and also is leading man Tony’s understudy.

Photo credit: Joan Marcus, 2010

“You’re not going to see the movie on stage,” Tedder says. “You’re going to see something far more original, something different every night and something far more alive.”

To attain a role in WEST SIDE STORY, one can’t be just an actor, singer or dancer, but you have to be all three, he adds, noting “there’s something to be said about being in an audition room full of guys dancing like men and moving with passion and anger and sexuality and technique.”

Indeed, WEST SIDE STORY could not have generated the same impact if it wasn’t for its innovative use of dance to communicate what words alone could not. Tedder’s favorite scene as Snowboy is the song “Cool.” “Just play it cool, real cool,” go the Stephen Sondheim lyrics as Ice tells Action to calm down his desire to get even, but the pent-up energy and anger explodes in dance moves. “That’s the pinnacle of what the story is about,” Tedder reminds us. “It’s about these hothead young men who have all this rage and emotional confinement and don’t know what to do with it.”

In other words, these boys may win our sympathies because of their rough upbringings, but at the end of the day they are also gang members who have turned to violence for the answers. Snowboy is the Coke dealer and also a user, and Tedder plays him like the “mess” he is. “When you see him on stage in many of the scenes, Snowboy is clawing at his head, sniffling to keep his energy in, doing everything to keep off the walls or from coming down,” he adds. “His name doesn’t get mentioned until the penultimate scene, but if anybody observes him, they’ll say ‘that guy’s on drugs’”

Playing Tony, however, is a different matter. “He’s the lover, not the fighter,” Tedder says. Because of that, his favorite scene is the very first when Tony sings to Riff, his best friend, that “Something’s Coming.” He adds that “to me, that song is the definition of Tony, a young man who feels something great within him but knows not yet what it is.” Of course, it will be a girl named Maria. For WEST SIDE STORY ultimately is a love story, a uniquely American retelling of ROMEO AND JULIET.

Tickets to West Side Story are available at the Fox Theatre Box Office or via Ticketmaster.