When I was six years old, I had a friend called Edwina who lived just a few houses down from my primary school. Edwina and I were friends because we both loved West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, set in 1950s New York City.

In West Side Story, the warring Verona families become two warring city street gangs: the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The titular teenage lovers are transposed as Tony (former Jet and best friend of Jets leader, Riff) and Maria (sister of Sharks leader, Bernardo). Our star-crossed pair meet not at a family party but at a community ‘Dance At The Gym’, and their romance climaxes with a deadly rumble between the Jets and the Sharks.