Grease
Book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and
Warren Casey.
Additional songs by Barry Gibb, John Farrar, Louis St. Louis and Scott
Simon.
Reviewed by
Brad Hathaway |
Issued October, 2007
Running time 59:15 over 21 tracks
Packaged with lyrics and 4 color and 7 black and white captionless pictures
and no synopsis
Sony Masterworks Broadway 88697-16398-2
Click here to read our review of the
production on Broadway
List Price $18.98 |
Click here to buy the CD
 |
The latest revival of this high school sock-hop
musical opened in August, 2007. This followed on the phenomenally successful
1972 original that skipped around between four different theaters for eight
years while compiling a record of 3,388 performances, and the also notably
successful 1994 revival which lasted nearly four years in one theater for
some 1,500+ performances. Will the latest incarnation run? It seems to
be doing well as it settles in. Some two months into the run, it is selling
about 90% of its tickets at a respectably high average price. The production will be remembered as the first Broadway show to have its
stars selected in a reality television series! Max Crumm and Laua Osnes won
the competition on last year's "Grease: You're The One That I Want" and
landed the roles of Danny and and Sandy under the direction of veteran
director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall (Wonderful Town, The Pajama
Game).
Crumm and Osnes are fine. They acquit
themselves nicely, avoiding any embarrassment and thrilling those who rooted
for them on TV. Of course, "fine" isn't exactly the
adjective producers look for when they pull quotes from reviews - but it is
the honest word for the performances that most potential audience members
or CD buyers know or care about. They may sing that "Grease" is the word. But truthfully,
"Fine" is the word. |
Storyline: The 1959 school year
is getting underway at Rydell High. Crises
abound. Who goes with whom to the hop? Should the new girl go steady with
the boy she met over the summer? What would dropping out of beauty school do
to a girl’s life? Will having even a junker of a
car improve a boy’s social life?
Grease was an early example of what
became a rage for 50s nostalgia. It opened two years before TV’s Happy
Days and four years before John Travolta appeared in Welcome Back
Kotter. Then, in 1978,
Grease was turned into a John
Travolta, Olivia Newton-John movie, filtering the songs through the
then-contemporary Bee-Gee’s sound. In packaging this revival Marshall directs her cast to sell every one
of the songs as if it were the big hit of the show. She
straddles the line between a full out return to the concept of the 1972
original and a recreation of either the movie or the 1994 revival. Not wanting to disappoint, she interpolates those songs from the
movie that fans expect to hear ("Hopelessly Devoted to You" "Sandy" and, of
course, the song that gave the television contest show its name, "You're The
One That I Want").
Some of the quirks of casting are less obvious in the
recording than they were on the stage.
Jenny Powers sings Rizzo's songs simply and
the very talented Matthew Saldívar gives distinctive voice to Kenickie.
Good, solid support comes from Ryan Patrick Binder as Doody, Jeb Brown as the hand jiving disc
jockey and Stephen R. Buntrock in the one-song role of the Teen Angel.
The recording here seems to make the thinness of
Christopher Jahnke's orchestrations for the on-stage band of eight even more
pronounced than in the theater. It is a shame that, among the pictures
included in the booklet they couldn't have included a
photo of Kimberly
Grigsby who conducts and plays one of the two synthesizers on the bridge
over the top of the set. Conducts? Well, actually, she dances the rhythms.
She's part of the show with her disco brand of conducting and that is
missing from the recording. The recording was made without any augmentation
to the band - a tribute to honesty in cast recording, but a bit of a
frustration for repeated listening.
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