"the heartbreaking story of two amorous young people, caught in the ethnic enmity of their rival communities"

The further we get in time from when “West Side Story” was written, the more the musical’s mythic dimension come into focus. This beloved 1957 classic earns its timeless status not through the authenticity of its snapshot of gang-ridden New York but rather through its re-envisioning of “Romeo and Juliet” as a ravishing fusion of drama, dance and song.

Broadway’s new bilingual production of “West Side Story,” which opened Thursday at the Palace Theatre under the direction of Arthur Laurents, the book’s 91-year-old author, aims for a more realistic approach. What we get is a grittier look at the street violence between the Sharks and the Jets, those turf-warring toughs from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and the translation (by Lin-Manuel Miranda) of some of the dialogue and lyrics into a more dramatically appropriate Spanish.

These renovations all make perfect sense (why shouldn’t the recently arrived Puerto Rican Sharks comfortably converse in their native tongue?). But it’s the heartbreaking story of two amorous young people, caught in the ethnic enmity of their rival communities, that continues to grip us — amazingly, even in a production in which Tony (Matt Cavenaugh) and Maria (Josefina Scaglione) struggle to fill out their archetypal roles as star-crossed lovers.