Awful...

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2011)

I've always found 'Grease' to be a troubling and often very lazy piece of theatre. Above any show I have ever seen has always been about creating caricatures and yet we are expected to care about these caricatures. I like a few of the songs on a certain level but as a narrative with characters and motivation I am afraid to say that I think 'Grease' is a mess of epic quality. The 1978 film adaptation is no different. While I think 'Grease' is a show that is hard to do well I think the movie might just be the worst version of the show that I have seen precisely because it is so "iconic". Travolta and Olivia Newton John created "icons" free of motivation, real conflict, and conviction. 'Grease' is loud and noisy but never does it feel populated by human beings and this is due to horrible performances.
The greatest problem with 'Grease' is that it has no real central conflict to the story. It definitely feels as if it has captured something in the ballpark of adolescence. Yet, 'Grease's definition of adolescence is such a distortion to bring out the easiest forms of theatricality. The problems faced in 'Grease' about blossoming sexuality and societal masks exist but 'Grease' not only confounds them but creates characters that make them seem the be all end all's. The quintessential grade school meaning of life question "does he like me or not" is not a good enough starting point. The show is about triviality especially in the Sandy and Danny romance because we both know they love each other and they both essentially have a similar circle of friends but the conflict that keeps these lovers apart is all about what clothes they wear. The actors have been given a near impossible task to overcome to make these caricatures characters. If singing in a musical should be the pinnacle of a character's emotional need to speak out than these characters are emotionally warped. The musical numbers are loud and well choreographed and sung but they feel so far detached. And I grant that reality isn't necessarily what one looks for but a certain sense of reality is needed in rooting these characters. Because everything is so false in the acting we feel like we are being lied to. That essentially what acting is, lying, but never do we get to that baseness unless something is really off or consciously dissected.
Because the songs do not come from a place of reality(not even heightened reality) the whole musical seems cartoonish. I think a particularly good example of the actor's failure is when actress Stockard Channing's Rizzo sings "Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee". Channing is a great singer but a lousy actress. Granted the scene is Rizzo making fun of Sandy because of her insecurities and I think that really is a compelling place to start a scene but even in her attempt to create a sarcastic caricature she seems over the top. I think it is telling that even in a moment where the play is trying to be over the top that it still comes off as too over the top. Channing creates horrible choices with her body, jerking herself around in such mechanical unnatural ways. Her voice accents every lyrical quality of the music in such a blunt and violent matter that we don't notice the lyrics of the song.
I've always found the ending to 'Grease' to be very troubling and I think the happy go lucky quality to 'You're the One That I Want' really shows this. I was more opposed to the crowd than anything else. I think this is important because it shows that even in a musical where you don't sing but are there there has to be a motivation and conviction to being there. The crowd scenes in musicals are hard to pull off well because you have to think about every actor creating a motivation for a whole crowd to erupt in song. The show ends with Sandy essentially giving up all her moral high ground and convictions and becoming like Danny who has not mutually changed himself. I can see why Sandy and Danny all dance but why the crowd? Shouldn't this moment have been merely between Sandy and Danny? They go into a funhouse and yet you see the hands of Danny's gang poking through the windows and they are there at the end. Why? I don't think the actors or the director thought hard here because they appear like gorillas and it makes the ending troubling. It can't just be gratuitous placement of characters even if they don't sing and just dance they still have to have motivation. If one doesn't just sit back and turn their brain off here than the ending feels symbolically like rape. I realize I might be looking too hard into this but I DID care about Sandy in a way. The inclusion of these apes actually left me after viewing 'Grease' to think that Danny wasn't going to "shape up" and so the lyrics ultimately meant nothing and Sandy's metamorphosis is a defeat. Having the lyrics mean nothing is the worst thing you can do in a musical. It is telling that this happens in 'Grease' during it's most famous number.
Sure 'Grease' may be escapist and the musical quality I suppose is kind of fun but the acting is awful. I want to see a production of 'Grease' which has Danny and Sandy in it and not the bad boy and the nice girl with their groupies.