Problem: West Side Story is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and conception and choreography by Jerome Robbins. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for the Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

The original Australian production opened in October 1960 at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, before touring to the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney in February 1961. Subsequent Australian national tours have been staged in 1983, 1994 and 2010. In 1961, a tour of Israel, Africa and the Near East was mounted. In February 1962, the West End (H. M. Tennent) production launched a five-month Scandinavian tour opening in Copenhagen, continuing to Oslo, Gothenburg, Stockholm and Helsinki. Robert Jeffrey took over from David Holliday as Tony and Jill Martin played Maria. In 1977, Amor Sin Barreras was produced in Mexico City by Alfonso Rosas Prigo, & Ruben Boido, Direction by Ruben Boido, presented at the Hidalgo Theater. Gualberto Castro played the part of Tony; Maria Medina was Maria, among other cast members was Macaria. From 1982-1984 a tour of South America, Israel and Europe was mounted with talent from New York. The Director/Choreographers for that production were Jay Norman and Lee Theodore, veterans of the original Broadway cast. The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has performed the show twice. It was produced by the Moon Troupe in 1998 and again in 1999 by the Star Troupe. A Hong Kong production was produced in 2000 with Cantonese lyrics, featuring Hong Kong rock star Paul Wong as Tony. It was staged at the outdoor plaza of Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival performed West Side Story in 1999, starring Tyley Ross as Tony and Ma-Anne Dionisio as Maria, and again in 2009, The Austrian Bregenz Festival presented West Side Story in a German translation by Marcel Prawy in 2003 and 2004, directed by the Francesca Zambello, followed by a German tour. A French language adaptation, translated by Philippe Gobeille, opened in Montreal, Quebec in March 2008. A Philippine version played in 2008 at the Meralco Theatre. It featured Christian Bautista as Tony, Karylle and Joanna Ampil as Maria. Also in 2008, an adaptation played in Portugal, directed by Filipe La Feria, with the name West Side Story - Amor Sem Barreiras, in the Politeama Theater, in Lisbon, with Ricardo Soler as Tony and Lucia Moniz and Anabela splitting the role of Anita. An international tour (2005-2010), directed and choreographed by Joey McKneely played in Tokyo, Paris, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, Sao Paulo, France, Taiwan, China, Italy, Rotterdam and Madrid. In 2011, a Lima production was produced by "Preludio Asociacion Cultural" with Marco Zunino as Tony, Rossana Fernandez-Maldonado as Maria, Jesus Neyra as Bernardo, Tati Alcantara as Anita and Joaquin de Orbegoso as Riff.

Did they not preform well in a certain area?

Answer with quotes:

Problem: For the theatre adaptation, see Shakespeare in Love (play). Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 American romantic period comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard. The film depicts an imaginary love affair involving Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) and playwright William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) while he was writing Romeo and Juliet. Several characters are based on historical figures, and many of the characters, lines, and plot devices allude to Shakespeare's plays.

After the film's release, certain publications, including Private Eye, noted strong similarities between the film and the 1941 novel No Bed for Bacon, by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon, which also features Shakespeare falling in love and finding inspiration for his later plays. In a foreword to a subsequent edition of No Bed for Bacon (which traded on the association by declaring itself "A Story of Shakespeare and Lady Viola in Love") Ned Sherrin, Private Eye insider and former writing partner of Brahms', confirmed that he had lent a copy of the novel to Stoppard after he joined the writing team, but that the basic plot of the film had been independently developed by Marc Norman, who was unaware of the earlier work. The film's plot can claim a tradition in fiction reaching back to Alexandre Duval's "Shakespeare amoureux ou la Piece a l'Etude" (1804), in which Shakespeare falls in love with an actress who is playing Richard III. The writers of Shakespeare in Love were sued in 1999 by bestselling author Faye Kellerman. She claimed that the plotline was stolen from her 1989 novel The Quality of Mercy, in which Shakespeare romances a Jewish woman who dresses as a man, and attempts to solve a murder. Miramax Films spokesman Andrew Stengel derided the claim, filed in the US District Court six days before the 1999 Academy Awards, as "absurd", and argued that the timing "suggests a publicity stunt". An out-of-court settlement was reached but the sum agreed between the parties indicates that the claim was "unwarranted".

what other similarities were there?

Answer with quotes:
Alexandre Duval's "Shakespeare amoureux ou la Piece a l'Etude" (1804), in which Shakespeare falls in love with an actress who is playing Richard III.