{"id":1641,"date":"2016-02-01T02:10:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T10:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2016-02-01T02:10:36","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T10:10:36","slug":"fox-presents-grease-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2016\/02\/01\/fox-presents-grease-live\/","title":{"rendered":"FOX presents Grease: LIVE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s my opinion about remakes – if you’re gonna bother, you better have a new take on the show or performers that blow you away.\u00a0 Neither were the case in this lackluster, joyless rendition.\u00a0 Although we were promised a melding of the stage and film versions, what FOX<\/em> delivered was a fairly faithful, yet faded copy of a beloved film.\u00a0 That isn’t necessarily a bad thing…just a pointless thing.\u00a0 But one must give credit where credit is due – the technical achievements of this live production were astonishing.\u00a0 The sheer scope of the sock hop scene alone was a marvel (marred by an audio glitch during the hand jive, where no one did the hand jive).\u00a0 There was almost one major disaster at the end when the dancer with the era-inappropriate frosted tips drove his tram onto the curb!\u00a0 But the biggest misstep was this – if you are going to go to the trouble of having a live audience, use them!\u00a0 We never heard a peep from them, except for applause at the end of songs.\u00a0 This made all the jokes fall flat.<\/p>\n

Happily, no one in the cast embarrassed themselves.\u00a0 But nobody covered themselves with glory, either.\u00a0 Aaron Tveit <\/strong>and Julianne Hough <\/strong>are attractive and capable performers.\u00a0 But they had almost no charisma and zero chemistry.\u00a0 Julianne lacks a winsome quality and you never really root for her Sandy, while Tveit was practically the antithesis of a successful Zuko (in some scenes, he looked eerily like the Kenickie of the film version, Jeff Conaway<\/strong>).\u00a0 His Danny never came off clueless enough for the early scenes, and was way too muscular for the later athletic scenes.\u00a0 The most successful performance of the evening was that of Vanessa Hudgens <\/strong>as Rizzo.\u00a0 While it was pretty much a carbon copy of Stockard Channing’s portrayal, at least she was interesting and authentically sassy – and kudos to her for pulling it off only hours after her dad lost his battle to cancer.\u00a0 What was left of the part of Kenickie was well played by that hot-ass, Carlos PenaVega<\/strong>.\u00a0 Keke Palmer <\/strong>made the most of her Marty, but someone should teach Jordan Fisher <\/strong>how to strum a guitar.\u00a0 The screen sparkled every time Ana Gasteyer <\/strong>came on as Principal McGee, alongside Haneefah Wood <\/strong>as her secretary, Blanche.\u00a0 Special mention must go to the film originals Barry Pearl <\/strong>and Didi Cohn<\/strong>, who brought some heart and pathos to her all-too-brief scenes as Vi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s my opinion about remakes – if you’re gonna bother, you better have a new take on the show or performers that blow you away.\u00a0 Neither were the case in this lackluster, joyless rendition.\u00a0 Although we were promised a melding of the stage and film versions, what FOX delivered was a fairly faithful, yet faded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1646,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}