Grease is the Turd

Yesterday, I acquired a ticket to see a live performance of the current touring production of Grease when the previous holder of said ticket fell ill. Although I was reluctant to go, I was in fact quite a fan of the movie in my middle school years, so I figured it couldn't be all bad. I was wrong. It was. Here are all the things that suck about seeing Grease on stage.

1.) The plot. There is no plot to Grease. Here is what happens:

Act I - They hang out and sing.
Act II - There is a dance. They hang out and sing. Rizzo is pregnant. Wait, five minutes later, it turns out she's not. Sandy changes everything she is to satisfy Danny and all is resolved.

That's right, little teenage girls who are the target audience: Do what you have to so you can get with the school asshole. AT ALL COSTS.

2.) The characters. Here's where Grease benefits from having such a popular movie version, where the characters are at least moderately well-drawn. In the stage version, they can be identified by one or more of the following characteristics: dumb; fat; slutty; mean; horrific. When people see Danny and Sandy on stage, they see John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. They have to, or else they'd have nothing to go on.

3.) The music. I have fond memories of several songs from Grease. These songs have been incorporated from the movie version into the musical to make it more like the movie. The songs that were already there? They (mostly) suck. They're sung by minor characters who have little bearing on the tiny amount of plot actually present, and they have nothing to do with the show. They don't progress the story in any way, and frankly, they're just not very good. Sure, songs like "Summer Nights" and "Greased Lightning" are fun, but they're practically rote at this point.

And here's something that made this performance of Grease uniquely horrible:



Taylor Hicks. Taylor Hicks, winner of the fifth season of American Idol, played the role of Teen Angel (the guy who sings "Beauty School Dropout") and boy, was it a hot damn mess. Yes, he sings well. HOWEVER, they extended his scene as long as possible, resulting in extreme awkwardness; Frenchie even said, "I voted for you!" at one point. Sorry, but I reject the anachronism. He also did a harmonica solo during the song, which was bizarre.

But just when you think you're done with Taylor, the curtain call happens, and he launches into a few bars of "Grease" before the cast does a medley of all of the most memorable songs from the show. Yeah, the ones they just sang in their complete forms. You get to hear them again. While they do this, Taylor more or less wanders around the stage, looking mostly lost, unable even to hand jive. At that moment, I felt just as lost as him.