I suppose I'll say that Grease, is "a" word, but not "the" word. I had never seen the stage show and was excited to take it in. And I will say the cast is strong and the show is a good one. I think the production suffers from its weakest feature, which the producers think is its best feature—if the ubiquitous advertisements are any indication. This weakest feature: American Idol Winner Taylor Hicks. For fuck's sake. He is all over the posters and billboards, which I think is insulting to the cast who actually have some theater chops. Luckily, he's only in one number, playing the Teen Angel singing Beauty School Dropout.
As I mentioned, I only know the movie, so it was interesting to see how the original play was structured. Or rather, it would have been interesting—this production has been re-imagined to include the hit songs written for the movie. The original show remains, and it was nice to see that the show is really an ensemble production: four men, four women, small chorus and support characters, and a solo number for each principal. Very unlike the movie that gave most (all but two?) of the songs to Travolta and ONJ. There's a whole history over at Wikipedia.
The strongest performance and strongest voice belonged to Rizzo. Allie Schulz was a contestant on NBC’s Grease: You’re the One That I Want and she comes directly from the Broadway company of Grease.
She knocks There Are Worse Things I Could Do to the balcony (where we were seated, on belay), and sells it, making the rest of the songs seem perfunctory.
Taylor Hicks was not so much an asset as a distraction. He belted the song fine enough, but it became all about him, not the show, nor the performance. Cutesy nods to his American Idol fame (Frenchie cooing "I voted for you...") didn't help. I was there to see the show, not a personality. I was not there for Taylor Hicks, but rather in spite of. Not for him personally, but the idea of television celebrity, i.e. fame itself, as performance. But I'm a theater guy, not a reality television guy. My loathing of the latter smeared my enjoyment of the former. (I do recognize that theaters are darkening all over Broadway during the new depression, and celebrity massive common apeal may be the only way to keep a production afloat.)
The show ended, the lights came up, and the cast took one too many curtain calls before launching into the Equity Fights AIDS appeal. The show was long. The show was over. We've given our applause and were about to give our donations before we could leave. It was well past 11:00. Then the unforgivable.
The lights went down again and the cheesy warm-up "50s DJ" act announced, "From 1959 to 2009, it's Taylor Hicks!" Some tweens in the orchestra screamed, but the balcony was full of groans. Alex, one of the many grown men from the rodeo in the balcony, was sitting next to me. he leaned over and said "He's got a captive audience. We're captives."
The stage lights changed to a lounge/disco routine, and we were forced to sit through a miniature Taylor Hicks concert of some abysmal White Boy Tries R&B number that was just awful. Someone needs to smack the lyricist for that one, or send him back to the group home or whatever. Hicks does have some vocal chops, which I would hope if he won the AI competition, so maybe the failure was in this ridiculous song selection.
And yet it got worse.
During this miserable crooning, he took frequent breaks to talk to the audience, thanking them for his support on Idol, making sure that we knew that his CD would be for sale in the lobby, and he might even be around long enough to sign some autographs. Are you kidding me? A sales pitch?
As soon as the curtains closed and the lights came up, we justifiably used the emergency exits as such.
I will add a final good note to the show—there was group of lovely (and slightly elderly) women in the balcony wearing matching pink bowling jackets. They were the Pink Ladies.
Right on.
The San Francisco Theater District is adjacent to the San Francisco Crack Den/Homeless/Sex Trade District. Walking from the Golden Gate Theater to the Muni station, I felt that the following sights were blogworthy:
Across the street is a shop called Secrets. It is fully fronted by windows, and appeared to have a female staff member (security perhaps?) lounging inside reading a book or text messages.
I don't know exactly what secrets they are selling, but I did notice the display (can they do this in a public window?)—
Yeah, that's a couple doing it in a free-standing sex swing.
Further down the street is the adult-themed Market Street Cinema ("hey" to Peggy Wang).
Personally, I had to applaud whoever named the adjacent convenience store.
It's the T&A Market.
I'll take my San Franciscan humor however it presents itself.
Update: I totally forgot. I saved my Playbills so I would remember some of these things. The role of the Wizard as played by David Garrison, whose voice I recognized despite his age and costume— I last saw him in a touring company of Guys and Dolls in Nashville. I am so glad he stuck to the stage (he may be best known for playing Marcie's first husband on Married with Children). He is a wonderful stage performer and singer, and a welcome surprise to my Wicked experience.
I was surprised to note that the part of Madame Morrible was to be played by Carol Kane. OMG—once I thought about it this role was made for her! (You know, being married to Miracle Max and all.) So perfect. But there was also an insert to the program. The Wicked company welcomes Patty Duke as Madame Morrible. A different performance to be sure, but c'mon! It's Patty Duke! She was a charmer through and through. And I am grateful to have seen her on the stage at least this once. Miracle worker, magic worker, whatever.
11 comments:
You say you are not passing judgement, what a joke. That is all you did was pass judgement.
Oh, you poor poor American Idol fan. You could be nothing but. Obviously.
Critic? Yes. Judge? Only perhaps. The only negative comments were on the crass commercialization and machination of the "Taylor Hicks Machine."
The marketing and his career, and frankly your comment, reek of desperation.
I say here that I am not judging, which is true-- I am not saying that Taylor Hicks is a bad person-- just that the situation was crassly manipulated for a captive audience and forced an unwelcome performance--correction--advertisement.
And for as the "all you did was pass judgement [sic]" comment...please. I did so much more. Observation, commentary, and humor. Never mind the praise where praise was due.
Seriously, you seem able to turn off the TV long enough to surf the Web. Turn both off once in a while and get the fuck out of doors. There is amazing talent out there to be enjoyed (or display yours yourself). Stars shine in reality, not on "reality" television.
Wow. Did I underestimate the Taylor Hicks fans out there. The blog log shows too many hits via a
"Taylor Hicks" search or Yahoo cull.
I will reiterate that I don't think he's a bad person. And I will also reiterate that good theater goers pay to see good theater, not celebrity. Celebrity may come from the former, but should not be in and of the latter.
For that there is Hollywood Squares.
I have read many reviews and recaps from this show. There have been a about two others like you who because of preconceived bias didn't want to say anything good about Taylor Hicks. But even you had to say he sang "well enough"
All others that I have read have been very positive about him and his performance, even some who like you went in thinking they would not like him. In New York they gave Taylor the credit for making Grease the best selling show of the summer. He got the credit for bringing in $150,000 extra every week. No wonder they give him star billing. He does put butts in the seats.
You must be desperate for hits to mention Taylor Hicks, since nobody reads it otherwise.
I'm here. I'm reading it. Not for Taylor Hicks.
We may be few, but faithful. If you don't think this is fun, feel free to click out.
Dude, the guy has almost 70,000 hits. For a personal blog with no central theme, that's pretty impressive.
He has great stage presence and put humor into the role. I love his new CD The Distance.
Okay, it has been brought to my attention that I was probably too harsh on the first comment. Yeah, it was 2:22 in the morning, I had just come in from a long night out, and I ranted.
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