Grease!

[jennythereader]

Tom & I went to see Grease in Washington Park last night.

It's one of my favorite shows, but this production was disappointing. The acting was... off somehow, almost as if the actors didn't really understand the words coming out of their mouths (this was especially bad in the song "Greased Lightening"). They also didn't seem to grasp that Grease is a comedy, a tongue-in-cheek spoof of what people think the 1950's were like, not a faithful depiction of what the era really was. They played scenes as straight that should have been funny or ironic, and the few serious scenes crossed over into melodrama.

The costuming looked as if the director showed the actors pictures and then told them to do the best they could at a thrift store, and the sound was really uneven.

Overall, the whole thing felt more like a high school production than anything else.

Comments

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

I'm a little surprised that they even tried Beauty and the Beast. It seems like the effects would be too complicated for the Park Playhouse.

[thursdayschild.livejournal.com]

To their credit, they did the best they could. A little smoke, some blinding lights, and they managed for it to be passable. That being said, there was a lot that needed to be left to the imagination.