Sharks, Jets, Bernardo, Riff…. Looking like they were scratched in with a knife, a bunch of relevant names decorate the scrim that hides the stage before the latest production of “West Side Story” begins. Look closely and you might notice the name Lenny and the initials A.L. among the graffiti, sly references to composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents.

Unless they have secret gangsta tags, the names of lyricist Stephen Sondheim, original director-choreographer Jerome Robbins and Mr. Shakespeare, whose “Romeo and Juliet” started it all, are nowhere to be seen. That’s OK; what matters is that a lot of creative folks have left their mark on “West Side Story,” and with material like this each production has its attributes.

This one certainly does, chief among them the youthfully radiant Maryjoanna Grisso as Maria, the wide-eyed innocent who grows up in a hurry, and gritty, graceful Michelle Alves as the slightly older, though not necessarily wiser, Anita.

Directed by David Saint, this is essentially Arthur Laurents’ 2009 Broadway re-staging where the Sharks and other Puerto Rican characters mix a dollop of Spanish into their songs and dialogue. For Spanish-speaking playgoers it must offer additional entrée to the material; for Anglophones it provides the sense of dislocation and exclusion that the show’s Puerto Rican transplants must be feeling in the neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen in 1950s New York.

(History notes that some Anglophone theatergoers on Broadway thought Laurents’ concept provided a sense of annoyance. We, of course, are above that.)

One probably doesn’t need to know any Spanish, or English, to appreciate “West Side Story.” So much of the story is told through music and movement and the songs – among them, “Somewhere,” “I Feel Pretty,” “Maria,” “Tonight” and the comic relief numbers “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke” – justifiably established themselves in the American musical canon even before the movie version came out in 1961.

They are reason enough to revisit “West Side Story.” Everything else is gravy.