WBAF's Official GREASE Review Thread — Page 3

^ The only articles I have seen have said West Side Story was coming sometime in 2008, no month has been specified. If it comes before May 2008, that's still this season.

Updated On: 8/19/07 at 11:26 PM

Whatever, with these reviews I doubt GREASE will get a nom, added to the point that we don't want Broadway shows cast as TV "reality" shows.
It is an insult to casting agents and other Broadway Creative Professionals.
(Not to mention seasoned actors and actresses)

So with $15 million in pre-sales what, if any, impact will all the NEGATIVE reviews have?
None. If anything can kill this show is word-of-mouth but if a show is critic-proof it's this.

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I would love to say what "Laura's Mom" is going to post all over the GREASE boards now.

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Well, I just want to register my congratulations for Kirsten Wyatt. No one deserves the good reviews more than she does, and she delivers are note for note perfect performance as Frenchy.

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NJ.COM review is about the same. Though here Lindsay Mendez (who I thought was great) gets her first positive notice. Again, no mention of Jenny Powers.
NJ.COM Review - Grease

I think some important reviewers mentioned her, even if Brantley didn't.
Not sure if they'll garner her a nomination or not but they may do something nice for her career and her future in getting cast in future projects. Good for her, she made a hell of a Young Phyllis.

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Middle of the road from Kuchwara and the AP:

"Now, about those television-annointed leads. As Danny, Max Crumm gives a cautious performance, vocally OK but short on swagger and sex appeal. Laura Osnes nicely gets Sandy's transformation, morphing with enthusiasm from good girl to bad babe. Check out her skintight outfit in the last scene, courtesy of designer Martin Pakledinaz. Osnes also sings well and throws herself into Marshall's spirited choreography.

So does the rest of the cast, who appear to be running on an inexhaustible supply of energy. That energy gets used to the fullest in Marshall's choreography, particularly in her witty reworking of the big dance-contest number, "Born to Hand-Jive," featuring the nimble Natalie Hill as the fabulous Cha-Cha DiGregorio. Marshall keeps the energy spinning from couple to couple, building an enthusiasm that demonstrates why she is one of the best choreographers on Broadway."
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/20/ap4034028.html

Negative from the Daily News:
"Americans may know how to choose pop singers, stand-up comics and ballroom dancers, but they have much to learn about picking Broadway stars.

That's evident from "Grease," which opened last night at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The production is part reality TV, Broadway revival and marketing gimmick. It all adds up to 2 1/4 hours of likable but lackluster entertainment, so if you've seen the show before, this is not a must-see."
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/culture/2007/08/20/2007-08-20_reality_tv_and_bway_dont_go_together.html


Scathing from Clive Barnes and the Post:
"WHEN I told someone I was going to "Grease," he thought I meant the country.

I should have been so lucky.

Then again, Greece was the cradle of democracy - and democracy played a role in the new but sad revival of "Grease," the musical, which last night wandered into Broadway's headlights.

So saying, the misguided selection of uncharismatic Max Crumm as Danny and unexciting Laura Osnes as Sandy was achieved by the votes of viewers like you. And while the TV show was no "American Idol," if all the participating voters were to be laid end to end, they'd add up to a remarkably long Broadway run."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08202007/entertainment/theater/tv_aided_grease_frightening_theater_clive_barnes.htm

Middle of the road from Eric Grode
http://www.nysun.com/article/60875

Very positive from Jacques LeSourd and Malcom Johnson (can't trust them anymore)

http://www.nynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070820/ENTERTAINMENT/708200313

http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-greaserev.artaug20,0,370687.story

Updated On: 8/20/07 at 06:26 AM

New York Magazine is negative

"The night begins with clapping and squeals—actual squeals—as the curtain goes up. There’s another eruption as the curtain comes down. For two hours or so in between, there’s Grease, though hardly anybody seems to mind. I can’t remember a Broadway production where the actual show had less to do with the experience that people came to the theater to have. Partly this is because Grease barely qualifies as a Broadway musical in the first place. Combining a dud book with songs that somehow manage to be even duller, it’s really three or four good tunes amid immense stretches of dead air—and, for this production, a curtain call that makes the rest of it seem trivial.

A funny kind of switcheroo happened on the road to Broadway. By using a TV program to cast the show’s leads, the producers have made the show feel like an adjunct of the TV program, like a season-finale-plus-one. Where the casting process itself was concerned, devotion to duty saw me through only the first episode, so I don’t have much sense of the field. But what has reached the stage of the Brooks Atkinson reminds me a lot of that moment in presidential politics when you watch the party nominee take the stage at the convention and think: Him?"
New York Magazine - Grease

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John Simon, Bloomberg News, is particularly rough on Kathleen Marshall. Good for Laura, bad for Max.

"Even so, this revival could be a lot more effective if Kathleen Marshall, its decent enough choreographer, were not also its mediocre director. She has made several poor directorial choices. Her adult actors are not especially adept at portraying teens. She has allowed the characters to be for the most part generic youths rather than the more differentiated individuals the authors, Jim Jacobs and the late Warren Casey, had in mind.

De-Raunchified

Next, she has given us characters less raunchy than those of the original production, and thus also less interesting. Even the movie version, some of whose songs are incorporated here, managed to be more sexually suggestive. And she errs even choreographically, in that her rigorously coordinated dance numbers convey little of the undisciplined bumptiousness of high-schoolers -- granted that this is not easy to translate into effective dance.

And what about those tried-and-TV-tested leads? Laura Osnes, young but already possessed of serious theatrical credits, is an enchanting Sandy. She is equally delectable as the straitlaced innocent she starts out as, and as the teenage sexpot she transforms herself into, with help also from Martin Pakledinaz's apt costuming.

But, alas, the televictorious Danny, Max Crumm (isn't the very name a warning?), is physically unfavored, falls somewhere between a dork and a goon, and is unable to evince the slightest chemistry with his delightful Sandy. How much more winning were the original Broadway Danny of Barry Bostwick and the Hollywood one of John Travolta!"

Bloomberg News - Grease

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ouch , well at least the weather is nice

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I find Barne's review more scathing. But no one listens to Barnes anymore.

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"Posted On: 8/19/07 at 07:27 PM


Man, this is gonna get slammed.
I can just sense it.
It's blowing in the wind.
It's shame, I like alot of the people in it."

I knew it.
I called it yesterday
However, I'm sure, I'm not the only one

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