Cast: Eric Schneider (Danny Zuko), Emily Padgett (Sandy Dumbrowski), Allie Schulz (Betty Rizzo)
For complete info, see the official Grease on Broadway site and select the touring cast.
I suspected, the cast (as a whole) was better than the cast of the revival with Max Crumm & Laura Osnes as Danny & Sandy. Grease is still Grease and there aren't many people who like musical theatre who don't know about the show or that the show varies from the movie in a few ways. The revival put songs that had only been in the movie version into the stage version for the first time on Broadway and they kept these in the touring production.
Unfortunately, the touring production did a couple of things the Broadway revival did not... These are the parts that lower my grade of the show. I'm grading the show including the pre-show and post-show entertainment, since it's impossible to separate these from the show - they were things one had to experience (to some extent) in order to see the show on tour.
Before the show, Dominic Fortuna (as Vince Fontaine, his character in the show) did a pre-show DJ sort of thing as if he were already playing music for a party or event of some kind. He encouraged audience participation (including singing along, which can be pretty painful with some of the audience members not being in tune). This bothered me a little (not as much as it bothered a friend of mine who saw the show on a different night), but the house lights were still up and I was able to read. I blocked out those singing along as much as possible (too bad I didn't have my ipod with me) and survived until the show.
The show was well done. The cast was very good (definitely better, as a whole, than the only time I saw Grease on Broadway, so that was positive. They did add some terrible references to American Idol and Taylor Hicks' voice was definitely bad, but it wasn't completely unbearable.
The cast sang during the bows, as they did in the Broadway revival. This is always fun for fans and gets people up and dancing some as they leave the theatre. Unfortunately, after this, they dimmed the lights. Thinking it was something collecting for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (a charity I support regularly), I sat back down. Sadly, I was mistaken. This was for a completely unannounced (to my knowledge - I talked to many other patrons who had not been aware of this horrific event) concert by Taylor Hicks (who played the Teen Angel in the touring production).
Tolerating Taylor Hicks' voice for his small part as the Teen Angel (especially with the horrible added American Idol references) was bad enough. I did not pay my good money for a show I enjoyed to be trapped in my seat and tortured with my idea of hell (country music sung by a horrible singer). The way the Orange County Performing Arts Center is designed, those of us with good seats (I wasn't that far off center) are very far away from the only aisles. In spite of this, I fought my way out of the theatre, so I would not have to be tormented by the entire post-show concert by Taylor Hicks. On my way out, I heard many fellow guests who were fleeing the theatre saying things like "Oh, HELL no, I don't want this" to each other. Clearly, I was not alone in feeling that I had been trapped and had a concert forced onto me. One of my friends (who saw the show on a different night) has some elderly subscribers between her and the nearest aisle, so she had to stay in her seat with her fingers doing their best to plug up her ears and endure the torture of the Taylor Hicks concert.
If you're going to see Grease live - beware! There is a Taylor Hicks concert afterwards and no matter how rude it may seem to the performers, if you want to escape before people sit down, you must do so near the end of the bows.
I think the theatre should allow time for people to exit or at least tell them that after bows the lights will dim again for a concert. Many of us did not want to see Taylor Hicks. I even considered not seeing the touring production of Grease because of him (even though the Teen Angel is a fairly small part of the show. I ended up seeing it in spite of him, but certainly didn't want to hear any more of his voice (especially if it's country music) than absolutely necessary.
Grade: C- (without the extra stuff, this would probably have been a B or B-)
Reviewed by Kat at the 6:30 PM show | 0 screams