Grease Live!

Hi everyone, it's Grease Live time!

I wrote a lot of this whilst watching it (in the many ad breaks!) and then I edited it and added to it today when I had a chance to think back about it and re-watch some of the songs on YouTube as well as reading some other people's thoughts. Annoyingly the Fox YouTube account has now blocked the videos of the songs from views in the UK (I'm assuming it's the same for everyone outside America) but thankfully some other people have uploaded some copies of them, obviously not as good quality, but at least we can watch them in the UK.  Sorry it's like a week late but better late than never!

I did enjoy it overall as I think it was quite a unique experience and something different. I didn't watch The Sound of Music live properly when it was on over Christmas here in the UK as I was quite busy and it isn't one of my favourite musicals so I lost interest. Therefore, Grease Live was the first one of these kind of things I had properly watch so it was a new experience for me. I've heard they are doing Hairspray so that is something to look forward to.

I'll start with the cast as always. but I'll tie this in with the song performances this time. I did like most of the cast, there were a few odd decisions such as Boys II Men instead of one Teen Angel which was a real shame but I'll come back to this in a bit. Danny was played by Aaron Tveit who I knew from Les Mis and I think he did a good job of it. He didn't come across as annoying as some people playing Danny do and he performed all of the key songs well. I liked his version of 'Sandy' and you could tell he was having a great time in 'Greased Lightinin'' which was fun to watch. He led the T-birds well and always remained the dominant character in the group which is what Danny has to do. Julianne Hough played Sandy and again, she did a good job I think. She was your stereotypical Sandy, staying the non-dominant and innocent member of the group at the beginning and getting stronger towards the end. I enjoyed her version of 'Hopelessly devoted to you' and I think she performed well in all of the other songs.

Vanessa Hudgens must get credit for her performance as Rizzo hours after her father passed away. Her version of 'Worse things I could do' I felt was spot on. It is my favourite song in the show so I did have high expectations. I don't think that she was the best Rizzo I have seen as she didn't come across as powerful or as dominant as Riz is supposed to be. She didn't seen to be as mean as she has appeared in other versions I have seen and she is supposed to be the strongest female character and I felt she was out performed by other cast members a couple of times. I think it was hard for me to see her in this role as I grew up with her playing Gabriella who is the Sandy character in High School Musical so it was hard at first to see her as anything but the innocent character role. After a while I did get used to it and by the end, especially after her song, I did properly see her as Rizzo and a stronger female character. Carlos PenaVega as Kenickie was fine as well, at least he got to sing part of 'Greased Lightnin'' which he performed really well!

I knew that Carly Rae Jepsen was in it, but it took me ages to realise who she was playing! In the end it was Frenchy and I think that she was an excellent choice. She performed well in all of her songs, including the new one 'All I need is an Angel' which gave Frenchy her own song to sing which I think was a nice addition. She had a few dodging acting moments in 'Beauty School Drop Out', but she did play the nice Pink Lady well. Jan and the rest of the T birds were cast well as well, no real stand out performances for me, it was a shame they missed out 'Mooning' as that denied them a song, but overall they performed in the supporting roles well. My favourite performance of the night was from Keke Palmer as Marty, her version of 'Freddy My Love' was fantastic! I loved her voice and style and I liked the way they did it, starting in the bedroom and then onto the stage and back again. Here's the version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZH6WWlDmd0
I thought it was clever casting and something I had never seen done before, well done Keke!

I hated 'Beauty School Drop Out', it is probably my second favourite song live and those guys (Boyz II Men) ruined it. To begin with it was weird as it was more than one guy and they kept doing that annoying Christian Aguilera thing with their voices, taking the melody too far away from the original version, which was really annoying. As others have noticed they also did not perform the comical elements of the song at all! I have seen Jason Capewell as the Teen Angel so many times now and he is the perfect person for the role, an excellent singer and perfect comic timing. Boys II Men did not do this song any justice and overall their singing as just really off key. Some have suggested that Darren Criss should have played the role as he performed the song in Glee so well, and I think that possibly this could have been the perfect casting choice and they messed up a bit on this one.

An odd thing I found and didn't think I would be saying, but Blanche I think was the person that made me laugh the most. She stole all the scenes she was in and had great comic timing. Patty always makes me laugh and she didn't fail to do so in this again. It was great to see Didi Conn and Barry Pearl, Frenchy and Doody from the film, in there, and it's a shame none of the others were there, but it was nice to see those two there at least! Jessie J singing the opening was pretty cool as well as it set it up nicely by showing you back stage and she is such an amazing singer anyway!

Overall, most of the cast did a really good job, especially considering the pressure of it being live to so many people. A couple of casting errors but overall, they performed the iconic roles well and as the play went on it was easier to see them as the characters.

I think I have to address the thing that comes up the most, which is the age of the actors. Obviously, in the film they were all way older than high school age and you could tell, especially the guys such as Sonny! In the stage versions they are mostly in the late 20s/early 30s, I've seen a few casts that were mostly in there early 20s and to be honest I do prefer it that way as it makes it more believable and they have the right energy levels and looks to make it more believable. I think that some of them in Grease Live were a little too old, Danny, Kenickie and Sonny stand out but I can see why they chose those people. To be honest, it could have been an opportunity to allow some up and coming young actors and singers to shine which I think could have been a better option. However, I guess they wanted some famous names to guarantee people would watch it so I can see why they went for some of the people that they did.

I have seen people complaining about a few changes they made so here are my thoughts on some of the most common ones I have seen. They got rid of the line all couples must be boy girl and things like that to suit a more modern audience, it didn't really bother me or affect the story so I think they got away with it, they may have done it to some other lines as well but if they did I didn't notice and they obviously didn't affect the story. The bit with Eugene and the car was rather odd I have to admit! Also, they edited some of the lines in 'Greased Lightin'' such to dragon wagon, which some people seem a bit annoyed about because they think it changed the meaning of the song too much. However, some of the cast recordings I have listened to also do so this wasn't new to me. I can understand why they did it as it did air quite early in the US and it was only just after 9 when the song was on in the UK I think. However, I don't think many people would have noticed the original lines, even kids really, I think I was singing the original lyrics when I was like 7/8, my parents probably didn't notice and I had no idea what they meant until I listened to them more closely when I was in my teens! However, I don't think it was a big an issue as people were making it out to be and moaning that they changed the lyrics, it really didn't affect the show.

The set was brilliant and I still have no idea how they worked out how to design it and get people from one place to another so quickly or set new scenes up so well. There were a few sound issues but nothing drastic or as bad as they could have been. Apparently some people spotted that the camera angles we watched in the UK were different to those in the US in 'Born to Hand jive' and this was possibly because they covered up a mistake, but I haven't really analysed this! If anyone has compared the two, let me know! Some people liked how they broke the forth wall at the end and went on the cars to the carnival and others didn't. I personally didn't like it but I can see why they needed to do it and it reminded you of the scale of the event they had just pulled off! Showing some of the backstage bits in between scenes or at ad breaks was a bit annoying and they could have shown all of the footage after, but lots of people enjoyed it as they went along and it wasn't too much of an issue to be fair.

Overall, I did enjoy it and I'm glad I had a night off my uni work to watch it. I couldn't help but sing along and thankfully they didn't ruin it for me. I liked most of the songs, a couple were ruined, but mostly their versions were updated and really fun. I recommend that people give it a go, skip parts if you get bored but stick with it as there are a couple of show stoppers in there. I am looking forward to the next live musical on TV and I think I will be a regular viewer of these now. I'm pretty sure it's still available on the ITV player in the UK and I'm sure you can find it on similar platforms around the world. The soundtrack is now in Spotify and iTunes here in the UK so have a listen to that!

I have no idea which show I will be doing next so I can't tell you what is coming up soon! However, I have done a quick post about the V and A museum so look out for that very soon!