Grease is a musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey that is currently on tour in a new German production. I caught it in the Stadthalle in Wien.

Plot:
Danny (Lars Redlich) and Sandy (Joana Fee Würz) met during their summer holidays and fell in love. They didn’t think they would see each other again, but when school starts, Sandy has changed to Danny’s high school. But now their two worlds – Sandy’s very conventional and goody-two-shoes one and Danny’s more rebellious one – collide and makes it hard for them to really enjoy themselves. As if high school wasn’t difficult enough anyway.

I’m a huge fan of the movie but I had never seen the stage version before, so I was really surprised by all the changes the movie made to the original. But honestly, they were good changes and the stage version should have incroporated them as well. But nevertheless, it’s entertaining.

The music is just plain awesome. It’s wonderful and fun and pulls you right in – no matter the version, there’s no changing that. The perfomances were fine, too (only when Doody sang Those Magic Changes it actually hurt. I’m aware that it shouldn’t sound perfect – but that was too bad, honestly), though not great and I really liked the stage design.

And I know that it’s always difficult to compare stage versions to movie versions, but it’s really hard not to, especially when I’ve seen the movie so very often, own the soundtrack and know it by heart.

And the movie just flat out wins in all departments. The changes it made to the original script, gave the characters more depth (especially Rizzo and Danny himself suffer from the fact that they are complete assholes in this version and there is very little to redeem them at all) and changed the plot from “only Sandy has to change so that the relationship can work” to “Danny tries to adapt, but isn’t really mature enough to do it, so Sandy steps up but tells him that he really has to do better in the future”. Which still isn’t ideal, but way better.

Anyway. Leaving aside that the film is so much better (except for Elvis the Guardian Angel), I was really entertained and enjoyed myself. But most of all, I totally want to see the movie again soon.

Summarising: A very nice evening.