Grease: Ao Vivo

For anyone looking for a remake of the 1978 film, this is probably not for you. This is a filmed version of the ORIGINAL 1971 stage show. It's not spectacular, but it's a pretty good job - as long as you don't compare it to the movie

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.

Briefly comparing to the 1978 film, which is still hugely enjoyable now, 'Grease Live' is vastly inferior in many ways but is still very much watchable on its own merits.

As far as live TV productions of musicals go, 'Grease Live' is superior to the live TV productions of 'The Sound of Music' and particularly 'Peter Pan' while fell flat, but 'The Wiz' while uneven fares the best.

There are many good things here. Many of the songs are great, some like "Summer Nights", "We Go Together", "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Greased Lightning" are classics. The choreography is spirited and energetic, especially at the end and in "Greased Lightning". The 1950s production values are very attractive, the dialogue is mostly witty though with the odd clunker and pacing though with the odd part where it grinds to a halt (especially "Beauty School Dropout") is sprightly.

'Grease Live' also boasts some good performances. Best of the lot is surprisingly Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, she brings sass and vulnerability to the character and successfully sheds her "Disney star" image, proving that she is much better than that. She sounds great, with her voice having come on hugely since the 'High School Musical' films with a powerhouse rendition of "There Are Worse Things I Could Do", one of the production's highlights.

Julianne Hough is far superior here than she was in the awful remake of 'Footloose', she is a very charming Sandy and has a lovely tone to her voice, with a sweet "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and doesn't hold back at the end. Jordan Fisher and Carlos PenaVega (apart from getting lost a little in "Greased Lightning" steal scenes, while Ana Gasteyer is good too. Kether Donohue and Elle McLemore prove that you can be funny and camp but also be subtle, and it was great to see Didi Conn and Barry Pearl.

On the other hand, this reviewer had mixed views on Aaron Tveit. He has a great voice, better than John Travolta's perhaps, as could be heard in 2012's 'Les Miserables' where his voice was one of the standout voices, and he is an energetic dancer, but he lacks the cockiness and charisma as Danny instead coming over as wooden and bland. Keke Palmer plays Marty far too broadly and is far too theatrical that it was painful to watch her, while Mario Lopez and particularly Haneefah Wood are supremely irritating. Carly Rae Jepsen's Frenchy sounds under-powered and strained, and she flounders with comic timing and never looks comfortable.

Not all the songs work either. "All I Need is an Angel" and particularly "Beauty School Dropout" are incredibly out of place and completely take one out of the period with too much of a present day vibe. It was nice to hear "Freddy My Love" and "Those Magic Changes" but the former also seems oddly placed, while the title song "Grease is the Word" is so dreary and the lyrics and vocals too often inaudible in a production plagued with problems with sound and balance with a lot of dipping in and out.

All in all, an uneven production and very much a mixed bag. A number of merits but some glaring flaws as well. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I liked the diversity firstly. Well done. The guy playing Danny is not a good actor, and he looks about 40 years old. I know this is live, but it felt rushed and forced. Almost like they were just saying the words from the original film but not actually acting. And I love Keke Palmer, she's so funny usually, but she overacted this part. Marty is supposed to be a a ditzy character, but that didn't come across here. Almost like she was playing someone completely different. Julianne Hough is actually a better Sandy than Olivia, sorry to say. Some of the extras added were great, some unnecessary. I loved the Sandy cheerleading tryout scene. However they shouldn't have added so much extra if they were pressed for time. The dance sequences were fantastic, I must say. So a really good remake, however had it not been a live show, would have been twice as good.

Overall, Grease: Live! was a success in my eyes. I thought Aaron Tveit, Julianne Hough and Vanessa Hudgens were outstanding in their respective roles as Danny, Sandy and Rizzo. They acted well and sang even better, which is all I can ask for in a musical like this.

The staging was well done and, all in all, I really enjoyed the show. My gripes are few and far between, but there were a few blips on the radar. The sound went out shortly and the sound issues carried over into another song number, but that didn't bother me terribly.

I really only had an issue with one section of the show. The section with Frenchy in the Frosty Palace. Frenchy, played by Carly Rae Jepsen, was alright. I wasn't blown away by her performance, but I hadn't really noticed it either by this point. Then she sang a song I read was written for her just for this production... and it showed. The song, "All I Need is an Angel" completely conflicted with the period of the other songs and of the show. It sounded like a teenager wrote it that morning and they threw it in. A 2016 pop song thrown into a musical set in 1959 and every bit as unfitting as it sounds. The song was so repetitive and dull that Idon't think there was much to it apart from the chorus.

Then the show is brought to an even more agonizing halt when Boys II Men shows up to sing "Beauty School Dropout". Their rendition, again, didn't fit the period the show was written for. You're telling me you couldn't get Johnny Mathis or someone else still living from the era? You couldn't even get someone who could at least sound like it? Boys II Men could have done a better job trying a Platters style rendition at the very least! I suppose you could tell me Boys II Men is a bigger draw than some nostalgic singer from the era, or close to it, but to that I'd ask you, how many viewers tuned in for Boys II Men? Really. How many? I'd like to know. Because I'm guessing nobody. I didn't know who they were. I had no idea. I'm 23. Who was the intended audience? I don't understand it.

Then we come to my real sore point of the evening, the hypocrisy of the censoring. I couldn't help but notice that, every time they returned from commercial break, the little rating box would appear in the corner of my screen. It claimed the show was "TV 14", which, in of itself, is a bit of a surprise, but it begs the question, what does "TV 14" really mean? What's appropriate for 14 year olds to watch? Apparently, the show couldn't quite make up its mind...

The words of "Greased Lightnin'" were too vulgar for the show, so they were changed. On the surface of it, I don't mind. I've heard these lyrics changed before. I do take issue with the fact that THEY changed while the rest of the show stayed the same (and in some cases got WORSE)! Several wholesome lines remained like, "Where ya going'? To flog your log?", "Bite the weenie, Rizz." and a reference about how cheerleaders hate to be "late". There were a slough of others, I just can't think of them at the moment.

Don't get me wrong. Innuendo is fine. It's funny, particularly in Grease, as it is so well done.

My problem is the absurd notion that cleaning up "Greased Lightin'" suddenly makes the show "family friendly". I fail to see the difference between the lines above and "Chick'll cream" and "She's a real pussy wagon" differ in their vulgarity. If somebody understands it better than I, please let me know. I'd like to understand.

I suppose you could argue that, when the soundtrack is released, kids will sing a clean version of this song and that's all well and good, but a number of them will have seen the rest of the show... the "damage" will have been done. Won't it? Just what do we really want 14 year olds to watch? The show took out all cigarettes, which is wholly unrealistic, but not show destroying. They made the lyrics of "Greased Lightin'" PG, but kept in and added sexual references and innuendo. What do people want their 14 year olds watching? What's wrong? What crosses the line and what's acceptable? I honestly have no idea after watching this production. It had no idea what it wanted to be.

You either PG the whole show or you let the thing play out in its unbridled, innuendo laden glory. Anything in between does the audience a disservice.

Either parents make a conscious decision to let their kids watch this and prepare to answer questions about what some of the dialog means or they keep their kids away from it because it isn't the kind of thing they want them to watch. As the show is in this form it doesn't properly service either side. This show left me feeling that 14 year olds were mature enough to handle, or stupid enough not to notice, the blatant sexual innuendo but were entirely too naive to understand that, even though people are doing it on screen, smoking is bad for you.

Go, have and talk about sex wildly, but for the love of God don't smoke! (Oh, and don't sing about sex! That's just vulgar and wrong.)