Well, I thought it was going to be fun. After a pre-show warm up by a smarmy, lip-synching dee-jay, Miss Lynch waddles to the stage as a prim but lovable homeroom teacher, bantering with the audience and getting laughs just by fixing her widened eyes on a "student" and devastating him with a shocked exclamation of "GUM???" But all too soon, the amps kick on and Grease! becomes the equivalent of a transistor radio on the beach: loud, canned-sounding, and too staticky to entertain. Authors/composers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey tap into 50's nostalgia, but they do so witlessly. Every decent send-up or put-down is swamped by lame high-school ass jokes.
Designer John Arnone can dress up his window-box set with a vintagely trashed auto, cardboard cutouts and day-glo lockers; and costumer Willa Kim can accessorize in ways that make Will Rogers look like a kinescope, but it's all like new slip covers on a lumpy sofa.
Typical of novice composers, most Casey/Jacobs songs are single-topic anthems that fit into the plot but never advance it (Rizzo's "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee" is the notable exception). Seemingly incapable of writing a show-stopping ballad, the authors drop in the Skyliners' oldie "Since I Don't Have You." Billy Porter, who Patti LaBelles his way through a gospel ode to staying in high school, may dazzle, but it's not my idea of fun. As for the arrival of Tommy Tune protegee choreographer, Jeff Calhoun, results are mixed. He gets fabulous moves from dancer Sandra Purpuro (as Cha-Cha) and has Tune-like fun with spare tires, but the all-important "Hand-Jive" feels busy and unfocused. Maybe he just needs better source material.
