I’m in paint-smell hell.
We’re having the inside of our house painted. We had been putting it off but when the painter said he could fit us in, we jumped at the opportunity. I’m sure we will be grateful when it’s finished, but it’s a lot of upheaval.
So when a friend discovered she and her partner had Covid and offered us their tickets to go and see Grease the musical in Brisbane we jumped at the chance. It was all very last minute but we booked a hotel to treat ourselves to a night away from the constant chemical smell of paint. The hotel was lovely and quiet and we had the opportunity to wander through the new Star casino in Brisbane. I am not a fan of gambling but the building is very interesting. We had the unexpected joy to run into a friend in the street and we popped into a bar for a cheeky drink with her before the show. Her train was cancelled.
We were both looking forward to seeing this musical. We grew up watching Grease the movie and like most Gen Xs we know all the songs by heart. Unfortunately, we discovered it wasn’t a singalong, though we and the three women sitting next to us gave it a red hot go. Even though we knew the songs, the singers on stage put their own spin on the classics making it very difficult for us mere mortals to do anything but hum along.
A musical is obviously not an exact copy of the movie however I was disturbed to discover that Patty Simcox had been given the role of Sandy’s love rival. Imagine believing that Danny would be interested in anyone but Sandy? As if!
But that wasn’t the only change to the storyline. One of the things I love about the movie Grease is that while Sandy is undergoing a transformation, growing up, loosening up, finding her inner woman, Danny is undergoing his own transformation. At the end you have the great pleasure of seeing Sandy in shiny, spray-on tights but also Danny in his Letterman sweater. As a teenager, it made showed me that everyone is capable of change if they want it and are prepared to put in the work.
So you can imagine my horror when the stage show Danny quit track, telling his fellow Thunderbirds that it was a waste of time. I was so disappointed not just for Danny Zuko and my teenage self but for the younger people for whom this may be their first exposure to Grease. I felt the directors had removed half the storyline and made Danny a very one-dimensional character. What’s next? A Fonzie who doesn’t care what Mrs. C thinks of him? A Maria Von Trapp too busy online shopping for new clothes to sew? Miss Piggy with an only fans?
But then what they did to Rizzo was worse. The actor playing the role was great and wow, when she sang ‘There are Worse Things I Could Do’ she really belted it out of the park. But they placed Sandy on stage as though Rizzo was singing ‘but to cry in front of you, is the worst thing I could do,’ when she was actually singing to her boyfriend. So they took a story of a girl trying to find her place in a new environment (and believe me, 50s LA would have been a WORLD AWAY from Australia at the time) and a boy trying to make something of himself and another girl, Patty who was ambitious and outgoing, and Rizzo who was adamant she wouldn’t let her slack boyfriend make her cruel and made them into vacuous ninnies. It’s not okay.
I fell asleep during the Lion King and Cats but I was too annoyed to drift off in this one. Why did they change these elements of the story? It wasn’t as though they made it shorter this way. Sigh. I can’t believe I’m ranting about this almost a week later. A note to anyone wanting to mess around with a fantastic movie in future- Please don’t.
I’m not one of those people who automatically hates an adaptation. There are plenty of movies I prefer to the book – A Good Year (2006), Julie and Julia (2009), Eat Pray Love (2010) (sorry…) Under the Tuscan Sun (2003). All of these were made with fairly large changes creating sweet, non-challenging stories to disappear into for a while but I don’t believe the story suffered for it.
I could promise to get over my outrage soon, but honestly I’m still holding grudges about Macy Gray’s lost Grammy and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar.
