Rusty dancer takes West Side glory
WHEN the call came to audition for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, actor, dancer, singer Mike Faist didn’t want to put a foot wrong.
The room was full of the best dancers in the world, all hoping to land a role in the film adaptation of the legendary stage show created by Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim.
Its famously energetic choreography helps tell the story of rival gangs the Jets and the Sharks — but the thought of having to put on his dancing shoes in such exalted company made Faist want to hide.
‘I said I’d be happy to audition, but did I have to dance?’ he told me. He’d been out of practice for a decade since appearing in Newsies, with its electrifying choreography, on Broadway.
(He subsequently appeared in the original New York production of Dear Evan Hansen, which featured less energetic numbers.)
But then he got a grip. ‘It’s West Side Story, you idiot. Of course you have to dance!’
Mercifully, choreographers Justin Peck and Patricia Delgado
could see that Faist, while rusty, was ‘definitely on a different wavelength’, so they went to his aid. Spielberg had his eye on the 30-year-old because he’d been impressed with his acting. So Peck ‘was like, I guess we’ll make it work!’ Faist recalled, grinning widely on our Zoom call. And he certainly found his feet as Jets leader Riff. The performance is one of the highlights of the film, that also includes standout work from Ariana DuBose as Anita.
Faist grew up in Gahanna, Ohio, with his mother, a probate lawyer, and father, who manages and fixes up properties for investment. In his spare time he would help out with construction work, and take dance classes.
His first part was playing a munchkin in The Wizard Of Oz. When his mum took him on a trip to see a Broadway show ‘I knew I wanted to move to New York and do theatre’.
He said that along with loving the craft of acting, you also ‘have to love the weirdos that also love it — and you have to accept that you’re one of the weirdos’.
Speaking from his home town, where he’d moved back to be with his dad who’d had major surgery, he told me working with Spielberg had inspired him ‘to chase joyous experiences’.
After shooting West Side Story, he appeared in Amazon TV drama Panic, and last autumn completed work on the film Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game.