Grease Live!

Obviously it is a big undertaking to mount a live television production of Grease. The stage musical is a mainstay of various theatre productions with regular revivals and the film version is a classic despite some of its cheesiness. Even John Travolta recently admitted the film has become timeless, popular with kids even with the suggestiveness of some of the dialogue and lyrics.

Jessie J kicks of the rainy opening by singing Grease and we get to the setting very quickly and the opening number of Summer Nights. Julianne Hough is good as Sandy really evoking the memory of Olivia Newton John although her character hails from another part of the USA and not Australia. Aaron Tveit does well as Danny but never matches the cockiness of Travolta, which might had been easy to do if you are a young actor who just scored an Oscar nomination and a worldwide smash hit a year earlier with Saturday Night Fever. Vanessa Hudgens was less acerbic as Rizzo than Stockard Channing.

The production has songs that are featured in the stage production which might not be familiar with those who have only seen the film version. The production knows it has go for those big tent-pole numbers like Greased Lightning, Hopelessly devoted, Sandy and the finale You're the one that I want.

As it is a live television number there are stage set changes built in to the production as the cast have to get from one stage to another. There are lots of ad breaks. I cheekily recorded this to my TIVO and watched it 60 minutes after it started and then fast forwarded the ad breaks. The running time for me was about 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I guess some people may not be happy with the diverse casting but Grease was always about people being true to their feelings rather than fitting in with stereotypes. The creators of the stage musical would only be too happy that the show has progressed.

Some of the production limits it to its stage show origins. The car race was rather pedestrian masked by use of lighting and smoke.

Despite the pruning of the lyrics in Greased Lightning, some of the dialogue might be deemed to to be rude to younger viewers but I think some of it flew over my son's head.