REVIEW: Grease Live!

Increasingly in the USA, networks are broadcasting live musicals. They seem to be bringing in generally good reviews and ratings boosts, however, last night’s ‘Grease: Live’ took everything to a whole new level.

Simply put, the show was electrifying; an absolute knockout.

The shining star of the evening was Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo who utterly embodied the mantra ‘the show must go on’. Hudgens tweeted on the morning of the performance that her father, Greg Hudgens, had died as a result of stage 4 cancer. With absolute professionalism and total fearlessness, she stole the show in dedication to her late father. Her version of ‘There are worse things I could do’ was spine-tingling and poignant. She offered a real layer of vulnerability to the otherwise outspoken and brazen Rizzo with enough conviction to make even the coldest heart warm.

ALBUM REVIEW: New Broadway Cast Recording of GIGI, starring Vanessa Hudgens

This week’s album review is of the cast recording of the 2015 revival production of Gigi, the musical, adapted by Heidi Thomas and directed by Eric D. Schaeffer – starring Vanessa Hudgens as Gigi, Corey Cott as Gaston, Howard McGillin as Honoré and Victoria Clark as Mamita. The production closed on June 21^st 2015 but the soundtrack is still available to purchase.

Based on the 1944 novella by Colette, Gigi was first adapted for the Broadway stage by Anita Loos in 1951, with an unknown Audrey Hepburn in the title role. My understanding of Gigi is that it is a tale of “high-end grooming and prostitution” which is supposed to be very French; by this I mean very sexual yet classy, Parisian in its feel and driven by a real je ne said quoi. This soundtrack is missing all of the above. It sounds asexual, über American and carries no real spark or joie de vivre.  If anything, it’s demonstrably un-sexy, which was a real disappointment to me.