anyone watching Grease live tonight?

[Mosby]

Vanessa Hudgen's dad, Greg, died yesterday, she will still be performing.

[femmocrat]

1. Thanks for the reminder!

Last edited Mon Feb 1, 2016, 09:39 AM - Edit history (1)

I will DVR it.

On edit: I thought it was great fun!

[Beaverhausen]

2. Oh that's so awful

I work on the Warner Bros. lot where this is being done. It's been an exciting few weeks.

However it's raining and windy today -they may do the carnival scene with umbrellas.

[NewJeffCT]

3. I saw her asking for prayers on Twitter or Instagram

or something. I'm sorry for her loss.

With a daughter into music and musical theater, Grease is required watching at my house.

[NewJeffCT]

4. so far, it's been pretty good

Aaron Tveit looks older than his 27 years of age. Good singer and dancer, but doesn't have the charisma of Travolta.

Julianne Hough has been very good as Sandy, and Hudgens has been excellent as Rizzo, especially considering her father passing away.

Interesting switchup with Boyz 2 Men doing "Beauty School Dropout"

[Mosby]

5. I wonder how they did the car switch

During greased lightning?

Two sets?

The production has been amazing so far as well as the performances.

[NewJeffCT]

6. I missed a few bits

including how they did the car switch. I'm guessing they had old panels on top and they somehow fell off?

They edited Greased Lightning quite a bit - "the chicks will scream" instead of "cream" and similar.

[NewJeffCT]

7. My thoughts

I thought it was good overall.

Great job by Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, despite her father passing away the day before. It's hard to measure up to Stockard Channing's iconic performance, but Hudgens did well. She doesn't have the raspy/scratchy voice of Channing, but she did well on Sanda Dee and The Worst Thing I Could Do.

I thought Julianne Hough was excellent as Sandy - more athletic than Olivia Newton John and a better dancer. While Aaron Tveit is a good actor, singer and dancer, he didn't have the charisma of John Travolta did in the movie, IMO. He also looked way too old for the part (he's 32 IRL and looks as old as Jeff Conaway did in the movie.)

I liked seeing Didi Conn as the waitress and Carly Rae Jepson did okay as the new Frenchie - the Frenchy Connection. Conn still has that squeaky voice.

The other T-Birds and Pink Ladies were fine, and the expanded roles for Eugene and Patti Simcox were interesting.

They certainly made it more like a Broadway show than the movie or The Wiz. (I did not see The Sound of Music live)

Congrats to all of the crew involved for what must have been a massive effort to switch scenes, costumes and everything. Though, they did have some technical difficulties - the sound outage during the dance, and some mikes not being loud enough at times, it really took a lot to get it all done.

Now, while I appreciate Fox making the cast much more diverse than the movie, were there many high schools in 1959-60 that were that diverse racially? Even in Southern California?