Western Stage nails West Side Story for their 40th anniversary.

West Side Story is such an icon of musical theater that it – like Show Boat and Oklahoma! before it, or Fiddler on the Roof, Evita and Wicked after it – has become one of the definitions for the term. Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s been adopted by high school, college and community theater companies, and has been referenced everywhere from Alice Cooper to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” to Glee. The film adaptation won armloads of Oscars. It feels like it’s never left our presence. But that means that it’s subject to being regarded as too familiar. Move along, nothing to see here.

Except there is.

It was created in 1957 by an all-star team: story and choreography by Jerome Robbins, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, libretto by Arthur Laurents. And what they came up with was deemed, at the time, an evolutionary leap forward in the genre. It dealt full on with racism, young nihilism, immigration and violence. It was angry, daring, mocking and exuberant. It blended spoken word, sung lyrics, dance, music, set and lighting in a way that must have felt like a new language.

The action begins right away, in music and dance only. Two small Upper West Side gangs, one Caucasian (The Jets) and one Puerto-Rican (The Sharks), both comprised of poor teens, encounter each other more and more in the neighborhood, their interactions getting increasingly agitated until they are duking it out on the streets. The stage is dressed only with several flats poking out of the wings painted as rundown tenements, two radio tower trestles climbing up a blank backdrop, and expressive lights cycling through colors and patterns. They don’t want a lot of set pieces because there’s so much movement and dancing.

The Sharks are lead by Bernardo (played with proud carriage and maturity by Javi Harnly) who rants about the mistreatment of Puerto Ricans like himself, his family and friends. He could be a civil rights leader. His younger teen sister is Maria (Tasha Tormey, playing her with naivete), newly arrived and seeking American freedom. Her friend is Anita (Roxana Sanchez, excellent with complex emotion), Bernardo’s girlfriend and a smart cookie herself.

The Jets are lead by Riff (Michael McDonald, one of the most energetic and athletic of the cast), who is not just street smart, but politics smart. He seems to know their course is heading for doom, but feels compelled to boost his makeshift family of lost boys with pride.

“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day,” they sing in a jazzy, off-beat swing with Frank Sinatra’s accent.

His best friend is Tony (Ezra Hernandez, who sings in an earnest, sometimes too earnest operatic tenor). He’s a Jet, but he’s looking for something more fulfilling than gang life.

The boys fight because they think they hate each other. (The girls are actually not big supporters of the boys’ warring, as in another Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing.) But they don’t know each other because their skin is a different color and they talk differently. They all go to a school dance with their girlfriends; they love dancing to the same music. (Western Stage choreographer and co-director Lorenzo Aragon shows off some cool ensemble moves, done in perfect unison to the hot music provided by the 18-member orchestra.) While they all respect old man Doc (Dennis Hungridge), the owner of a diner where the gangs meet on quasi-neutral ground, they all loathe Officer Krupke (Dan Tate) and Officer Schrank (Fred Herro) who don’t like the boys.

In “America,” Bernardo and Anita sing with insight about their new home.

Anita: Lots of new housing with more space.

Bernardo: Lots of doors slamming in our face.

Anita: I’ll get a terrace apartment.

Bernardo: Better get rid of your accent.

The story is grounded in big-city poverty, parent and police abuse and prejudice, but at its beating heart is love: the spark, the growing desire, the undeniable propulsion.

The love story pushes aside the hate for a succulent stretch in the middle: the sweet interlude of “The Dance at the Gym” when Tony and Maria first meet; tenement rooftop duet in which their singing parts entwine with “Tonight, tonight, the world is full of light.” The story weaves in enough tension that the proclamations of love are earned.

Tormey (Maria) and Sanchez (Anita) share a heart-wrenching duet in the heavy “A Boy Like That/ I Have a Love,” coming to a cathartic conclusion. One of the Jets is a toughie of a tomboy named Anybodys (Allyson Bojorques) who wants to be one of the boys, but later leads the song “Somewhere” to reveal a yearning to belong that is universal and aching.

The music is a mix of jazzy and dissonant, hip and schmalzy, like a mash-up of Gershwin and Stravinsky. But the melodies come rising out of the urban cacophony. This is a work that deserves to be heard, seen, felt and remembered.

WEST SIDE STORY plays 7:30pm Sat and Fri (Aug. 22 and 29) and 2pm Sun, though Aug. 30, at Western Stage Main Stage, Hartnell College, 411 Central Ave., Salinas. $24/ general; $12/student. 755-6810, www.WesternStage.com