Jets and Sharks will vie again

The 50th-anniversary production of “West Side Story” will arrive on Broadway just in time -- for year 52.

Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the landmark 1957 show, will direct the revival next year, which doesn’t have a cast or theater yet. He says it simply wasn’t feasible to mount a new production in time for the anniversary. “You don’t do something because of a date, and you don’t do something unless you have a new idea,” said Laurents, 89. The idea he has in mind, he said, “is unlike any that’s ever been done.”

The attitude of the Jets and Sharks will be markedly different from past stagings as well as the 1961 film, which he doesn’t like.

“They’re not adorable street kids,” Laurents said. “They’re killers, each and every one of them. They’re vicious and they have to be played that way.”

He said he’ll also emphasize “the real difference between the Puerto Ricans and so-called Americans, not just what color they’re wearing. Look at all this immigration stuff now -- if that isn’t about race, I don’t know what is.”