Australia Had Its First Taste Of Live TV Musicals Last Night… It Actually Wasn’t Bad

Look, Grease is not a good musical. It’s just not. For those of us who suffered through a high school production of the awkwardly paced, poodle skirt-wearing nightmare, any Grease musical is still a somewhat harrowing experience.

This is why Grease, the 1978 movie starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, was so great. They cut out the worst parts of the stage show with surgical skill, rearranged the best songs, and cast two superstars in the generally dull roles of Danny and Sandy. What survived is the only sane explanation for the popularity of this middling musical: a fun, filthy, facetious film that made light of its own stiff upper lip. Here was a musical that made sense; and it showcased the droll, self-mocking talent of Newton-John along with the supernova psychopathy of Travolta as Danny Zuko — a sleazy try-hard loser who was somehow also pure, irresistible, unadulterated sex.

This is why Fox had its work cut out for them in opting for a live stage performance of Grease in all its awkward, clunky glory. The first live TV musical to be broadcast on Australian free-to-air (on Channel Nine), the show last night turned out to be a sharp, sparkly, satiating production. It featured US Dancing with the Stars vet Julianne Hough as Sandy, and Broadway regular Aaron Tveit as Danny but, while technically brilliant and visually arresting, director Tommy Kail’s Grease Live was missing one crucial element: the sex.

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What Even Is This? The Emergence Of The Live TV Musical

If Australians are unfamiliar with the recent US phenomenon of the ‘Live TV Musical Event’, it’s because Grease: Live is the first of its kind to make it to our shores. It’s possible Grease: Live is only minimally enjoyable for those Aussies who don’t know which American performers are former Disney Channel stars. Still, the disappointingly un-hate-watch-worthy Grease: Live is a very different specimen to live TV musicals past.

NBC began the trend in 2013 with The Sound of Music Live! (starring American Idol star-turned-country singer Carrie Underwood and stony vampire Stephen Moyer): a truly terrifying experience that included brief moments of levity like Audra McDonald’s ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ and Rolfe’s short shorts. Then came Peter Pan Live! starring a rickety Christopher Walken and Allison Williams’ uncompromising wig. Both shows were dreary and dragging, made more uncomfortable by the lack of a studio audience to which the hammy actors could play.

Last year’s The Wiz Live! was a significant improvement on the format, starring international treasures Common, Uzo Aduba, Mary J. Blige and Queen Latifah. The first live TV musical to garner any real critical respect, The Wiz Live! showcased brilliant, nuanced performances and fully realised emotional stakes.

Grease: Live, which is Fox’s first foray into the live TV musical realm, certainly doesn’t hedge any bets. It features bankable stars like High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens, erstwhile Jonas Brother Joe Jonas and bona fide pop icon Carly Rae Jepsen. It takes on a beloved, stalwart American musical. It features an interactive audience of squealing teen girls. And it was directed by Tommy Kail, the man behind Broadway juggernaut Hamilton (and the likely future winner of many, many Tony awards). Kail, who is a theatre stalwart, is a duck to water in the TV-directing pond. But did it actually succeed?

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Resurrecting Grease: How It Played Out On Screen

Grease: Live is the first live TV musical to use multiple soundstages as well as an outdoor lot (at Warner Bros studios); so cameras tracked through set after set, swooping in and catching delicious little moments, making a rather small ‘event’ seem expansive. The cast zipped from one set to the next on (desperately unnecessary) branded golf carts that were revealed to us with relish by a mugging Mario Lopez as Vince Fontaine, play-acting red carpet host Ryan Seacrest. (I would’ve preferred Moonface Bert Newton, a la the recent Australian stage show.)

Kail and his technical crew managed to include a high school, a body shop, an all-American home, a drive-in theatre, an honest-to-goodness Ferris wheel and a truly embarrassing drag-racing scene in their TV musical with a great deal of credibility. True to Kail’s frenetic style, everything was always moving, always shifting, always abuzz with energy.

If only the leads, Hough and Tveit, possessed that same buzz.

Hough is a commendable performer in quite possibly one of the worst roles in history. Sandy really is a drip who drags down the story in Grease; how Newton-John pulled off a loveable performance in the film is still beyond me. And, while Hough sings well and positively beams innocence, especially in the tricky pop ballad ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’, her Sandy tries for sincerity but comes off saccharine.

Tveit, a Broadway trouper who should know better, has spurts of brilliance as Danny (including a zippy performance of ‘Grease Lightning’ and a lot of melty smiles at the camera). But, ultimately, it feels as if he decided not to try very hard. He is dedicated to saucily removing jackets in a way that reveals he has amazing arms, but his Danny is too safe, too afraid of looking stupid. For that, he’s woefully miscast here, and his divine voice is probably a touch too ‘good’ for a bad boy. His performance makes you long for raw, zany Travolta, who was never scared of silliness.

This is a shame because both Hough and Tveit are extraordinarily impressive dancers. The moments when they gyrate together are truly electric; Hough is, of course, a dancing supernova and, when he wants to, Tveit makes it look like the choreography was designed just for him. The dancing is the only time Hough and Tveit show any real sexual (or romantic) chemistry. If only they could’ve hand-jived all night.

Thankfully, Grease lives or dies by its wacky ensemble, and in Grease: Live there are plenty of grand supporting performances. Keke Palmer killed as sultry Marty Maraschino, pulling off the musical’s worst number, ‘Freddy My Love’, with a great deal of flair. A quiet, fluttering performance of Doody, including a truly swoon-worthy rendition of the underappreciated ‘Those Magic Changes’, made an instant star out of Jordan Fisher. You’re The Worst’s Kether Donohue was a great, eager Jan (although I wish people would stop casting Donohue in ‘fat’ roles when she is in no way fat, except perhaps by Hollywood’s insane standards).

Also, the truly adorable Carly Rae Jepsen, whose brilliant ’80s revival album soundtracked your 2015, stole the show as Frenchy. Jepsen, who is a stage vet, was doing something totally different to everyone else in Grease: Live — in the best way. Her endearing Frenchy was introspective and intuitive; she actually listened to her fellow performers. Too bad she was saddled with one of the production’s worst innovations: a dud original song entitled ‘All I Need Is An Angel’. Jepsen and Fisher stood out as the only performers not playing to the rafters; they had the push/pull of live TV perfectly down pat.

A special mention should also go to consummate professional Vanessa Hudgens, who stalked the stage as Rizzo just one day after the tragic death of her father. Hudgens, who was a fizzy neo-Stockard Channing, thrashed out a resonant performance of ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’, and dammit can she shimmy.

Still, I wish she’d shimmied more. I wish they’d all shimmied more. In the early 1970s Grease was a raunchy, grungy off-off-Broadway Chicago show — filth in the extreme. It is, after all, about high school kids and their sex lives. Since its ascendance to Broadway (and countless revivals in high schools and for upmarket crowds on the Great White Way) it has been sanitised again and again. The film, which understood the raunch of the original material, positively oozed sex; Travola only had to glance at the camera and millions of thighs would melt. Much of that risqué attitude was conveyed via great, grimy dance moves, but the choreography in Grease: Live, by Glee choreographer Zach Woodlee, is accomplished but bland — a vacuous, technically proficient display without any real grunt or grind.

Grease: Live was also missing, for the most part, sparks of originality. The eerie echo of the 1978 movie was everywhere, from the comedy beats, to the sets, to the achingly familiar costumes. It was such a definitive redux of the film that Tveit even donned Travolta’s ’70s-style tuxedo (then a nod to his iconic performance in Saturday Night Fever) in the school dance scene.

The best moments in Grease: Live however were wildly, joyfully different from what we expected: the dull ‘Freddy My Love’ turned into a glittery USO stage show; Doody grabbed a guitar and serenaded us with a sweet, unfamiliar tune; and Boyz II Men blew up ‘Beauty School Dropout’ with their special, spine-tingling performance.

Did I want more of that, and less original songs written just for Carly Rae Jepsen? Of course.

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Could This Work In Australia?

What would an Australian Grease: Live look like, I wonder? The Yanks are one step ahead already: former Neighbours star Sam Clark played Scorpion leader/T-Birds nemesis Leo (whose descriptor was changed to ‘hatchet face’ from ‘crater face’ because, unlike the movie actor Dennis C. Stewart, Clark has perfect, perfect skin). And, the opening number, jukebox hit ‘Grease is the Word’ was sung by British pop star Jessie J, whom we Australians have claimed as our own since she became our third-favourite judge (after Ricky Martin and the toothpick in Joel Madden’s mouth) on karaoke weep-fest The Voice.

Sandy certainly works better when she’s from Sydney instead of Salt Lake City, Utah too — really, is there a better way to say ‘You making fun of me, Rizz?’ than with the Aussie twang? If Grease: Live were an Australian production perhaps our Sandy would’ve been played by your least-favourite Voice judge, Delta Goodrem. And, as in our recently touring stage production, no doubt Danny would’ve been played by the man who is, incredibly, Australia’s answer to a Broadway star: Rob ‘Millsy’ Mills.

I wonder how long it will take Australia to stage its first ‘Live TV Musical Event’? (Remount of Keating! or Shane Warne: the Musical, anyone?)

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Grease: Live is streaming on 9Now.

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Matilda Dixon-Smith is a freelance writer, editor and theatre-maker, and a card-carrying feminist. She also tweets intermittently and with very little skill from @mdixonsmith.