Gee, that was impressive.
I just watched last night's Grease: Live presentation and I was blown away by how elaborate and costly the whole thing was. In fact, the weakest thing about it I thought — and this is not much of a complaint — was that at times it felt like the actors and cameras moved too much and that the tech guys were just showing off, saying "Hey, look what we can do on a live show!"
And somewhere, the folks behind NBC's live musicals — The Sound of Music, Peter Pan and The Wiz — were moaning, "God, if only we'd had that kind of budget."
Of course, this was not a TV version of a stage musical. It was a TV version of a hit movie based on a stage musical…and at times, I felt it stayed too close to the film for no good reason, kind of like that pointless shot-for-shot remake someone did of Psycho a few years ago. Still, I guess that's what people think Grease is — a movie, not a play — and that's what was expected.
The cast was superb. The only review I've seen so far felt the leads were too bland compared to John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. I'll grant them that Danny could have used a little more earthiness and Brandoesque hoodlum quality but I thought Aaron Tveit more than made up for it with dancing and body lingo. And hey, the role of Sandy is supposed to be bland until the finale and as far as I was concerned, Julianne Hough did it as well or better.
At times though, I felt all the actors were upstaged a bit by the production values. They all deserve Emmy Awards for hitting all their marks and getting it right the one time it counted. What those folks did is not easy.
I loved the live audience and the way they were integrated into some scenes. And I found myself wondering if the unions are going to say that some of those audience members should have been paid as extras. I also wonder if some of the more judiciously-placed ones were.
Nice that the rain didn't ruin their big finale. I suspect that the whole part of the carnival in which they sang "You're The One That I Want" would have been done outdoors if they'd been certain it wouldn't be storming, and that they moved that part inside since they weren't certain.
Also nice to see that Rydell High is finally integrated. Bet that bothered someone but by showing us all the scene changes and cameras and actors rushing off to change wardrobe, they tore down that symbolic fourth wall and said clearly, "This is a play." So sure, there can be anachronisms.
(And now that I think of it: Was that exterior set of Rydell High a redress of the same school front from which Robert Preston led "76 Trombones" in The Music Man? And where Conrad Birdie played "Honestly Sincere" in Bye Bye Birdie? I think that set is still standing on the Warner lot but the terrain around it seemed different from the last time I was there.)
So how hard did they beg/bribe Travolta and Newton-John to do cameos? I'm surprised these live shows don't try for a few surprises.
We heard that there were some audio problems with the live telecast to the east coast but they seemed to have all been fixed by the time it got out here. The biggest oops! I saw was that the kid at the end didn't do a great job of hitting the coach in the face with the pie.
Anyway, I still think it's not a very wonderful musical to begin with but they sure gave it a first-class presentation. So is this going to be the new standard? Have they raised the bar such that when NBC does its next one, Hairspray, they're going to have to up the budget and try to top this? Because it's going to be very hard — and expensive — to do that.