Grease The Musical
I was more or less familiar with the script for Grease the musical long before I had seen it. You see, years before Grease the Broadway musical got big, the movie version of Grease made a huge splash in entertainment. I know that Grease the musical is the original, but somehow it seems like a more modern adaptation. After all, a generation of kids who were raised on the film Grease went on to see musical productions of it in college. It rarely works the other way. People almost never start with the musical Grease and move on to the movie.
Anyway, I first got a chance to see the Broadway production of Grease the musical during a recent trip to New York. It had not been on my short list to be honest. There were a lot of big Broadway productions out there that year, and I want to see several others. I was interested in seeing Cats the Musical, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera ? you know the big ones. My girlfriend, on the other hand, was crazy about Grease the Musical. It was her main goal for our trip. I'm glad that she insisted on it. It ended up being a great time.
One of the great things about Grease the musical is how much more energy is communicated when you see it in life. We are so used to such a standard of realism on the television or the movie screen that we forget what is left out. Seeing actual people, singing, dancing, and performing in front of you is thrilling in a way that movies never can be. Don't get me wrong ? movies have their thing. All I'm saying is that, when faced with a choice of seeing a musical or a movie adaptation of the musical, I will choose the musical every time from now on.
The Grease musical wasn't flawless by any means. We had the misfortune of going on a night when one of the leads was sick. The understudy was very good, but you could tell that the cast was not quite used to the current configuration. There were just a few moments that were a bit sloppy, but on the whole it was quite good. I'm sure that the more refined theater critics would have had negative things to say, but I was so happy to see it that I didn't care. It was a thrill to me, and everything I could have imagined it be.
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