The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Grease Live!
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I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who tuned into Grease Live! given the record ratings the show got. I was expecting the show to be the trainwreck of all trainwrecks but luckily it wasn’t. However, there were some things that need to be talked about, so lets analyze Grease Live!
The Good
The cast. Given this was one of the biggest areas of concern I had, imagine my surprise when EVERYONE in the cast proved to be awesome. Julianne Hough was the person I was least excited about and she sang my doubts away early in Summer Nights. She managed to really dig into that character and give us maximum impact. Aaron Tveit has long had a place in my heart as a Broadway musical fan and he showed the world how awesome he was. He showed some other stuff too
I also loved Keke Palmer getting to just chew the scenery and dive into that character of Marty, and the T Birds, especially Jordan Fisher were so awesome. The MVP for me was Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, who managed to give a phenomenal character performance not even a day after her father passed away.
P.S. Have you heard Jordan’s new song? It’s fire.
The scale. I have some thoughts about what Grease had to do to get the scale, but seeing the big sets and the amount of people involved in the production was impressive. Also impressive were the blending of cinema and theater, such as the scene with Freddy My Love, which starts where the Pink Ladies are having a sleep over and suddenly we enter a dream type sequence where Marty is singing in a USO-esque concert, all in camera complete with wardrobe changes. And the black and white sequence shot in 4:3 during the dance was cool.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKqcRzxp7sY]
Camera movement. This is the only area where Fox dusted the NBC musicals. We had tracking shots, crane shots, cool framing, purposeful composition, it was a production students dream.
The Bad
Carly Rae Jepsen and the new Frenchie song. I like Jepsen and her latest album was pure pop fun, but I honestly could have cared less about her in the role of Frenchie. She didn’t really register amongst the cast and the new song written for the production wasn’t that good.
The breaking of the wall. It might have been cool to take that tour through the set, but I kinda wish they had just allowed us to “believe” that the production was happening. Also, showing us the rehearsal footage and Mario Lopez announcing just felt like not allowing us to enjoy the stage elements that much.
The modern vs 50s jokes. Yes, we know this show is set in the 50s but they could have cut all those wink wink type jokes cause they got so tireseome.
The Ugly
The narrative and run time. Remember what I said about this not being as bad as I thought it would be? Well, here’s where I talk about what kept this from being great. In an effort to have a production of this scale, they no doubt had to have all of the commercial breaks to move people around. This however really did a number on the story, in a bad way, making a musical that’s maybe 2 hours long into a 3 hour slog. The only time the production was really in focus was during the musical numbers and the commercials kept killing the momentum of the show. Nevermind the fact that many of the characters felt like they were offscreen forever, particularly Sandy, which shouldn’t happen. I applaud the gusto to go for a big production, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of storytelling or an energizing pace.
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