Yet in this version, both gangs appear to be multiracial melting pots. Could this be van Hove’s point, that prejudice exists only in the mind’s eye? Maybe, but once these boys and girls start to rumble, you’ll wish they were wearing team uniforms. (An d’Huys did the tightfitting, street-tough costumes.)

As a consequence, the fabled dance at the gym sequence feels kind of like a loosely organized line dancing competition. Only the “America” number, in which the Puerto Rican men and women sing and dance out opposing views of their homeland, has that pulsing clarity you long for elsewhere. (The number is appealingly led by a spiky Yesenia Ayala, as Bernardo’s girlfriend, Anita.) And an unexpected, rain-soaked postscript for the anthemic “Somewhere,” in which the characters are sorted into the idealized pairings of their dreams, is an oasis of quiet beauty.

No, I haven’t forgotten that there’s a Romeo and Juliet-style love story at this show’s center, the source of some of the most beautiful ballads ever written for Broadway. Here, Tony, the peace-loving former Jet is played by Isaac Powell, while Maria, the innocent young Shark girl he falls for, is portrayed by Shereen Pimentel.

Both performers sing pleasantly. (The music, supervised by Alexander Gemignani, is as ravishing as ever, when you let yourself focus on it.) And they share a loose, endearingly goofy quality that makes this Tony and Maria seem especially young and vulnerable. You fear for their safety. You are less likely to feel they are capable of obsessive, transformative passion.

Some of their fraught courtship is conducted behind the main stage, in custom-built alcoves representing a sweatshop; a drugstore; an apartment. (The set is by van Hove’s constant collaborator, Jan Versweyveld.) Since the audience’s eye can’t always follow the characters, we have no choice but to watch their interactions onscreen.

Punctuative video has been deployed many times before by van Hove, often brilliantly — to take us into the corridors of power (in the Shakespeare anthology “Kings of War”), the labyrinths of Id (in his adaptation of the Visconti film “The Damned”) and the camera-ruled universe of television (in last season’s “Network”).