Hey, remember nostalgia? Remember that funny, innocent way people used to look at the past?
The extraordinary accomplishment of the Tommy Tune production of " Grease! ," a revival of the long-running 1972 musical about the 1950's, is to make you perversely sentimental about lost sentimentality, to pine not for a simpler time but for simpler ways of evoking it.
If you squint, you can discern the bones of the original, a corny, good-natured paean to adolescent randiness that was translated into a prodigiously successful 1978 movie. And, in the version that opened last night at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's book, music and lyrics are pretty much intact.
But somehow the musical's rudimentary story line, characterizations and affectionate spoof songs are nearly lost amid the clumsy spectacle and high-decibel orchestrations of this road show, which has been directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun under Mr. Tune's supervision.
Set amid the Day-Glo panels of John Arnone's sight-gag sets, with surrealist cartoon costumes by Willa Kim and music that mixes Jacobs and Casey's parodistic songs with authentic 1950's standards, this is (gulp!) a post-modernist " Grease! " And it appears to be expressly aimed at a young audience that teethed on irony and a trans-generational jumble of styles wrenched out of context.
The dilution of the original source had already begun with the high-spirited but sanitized film version, produced by Robert Stigwood, which transposed the setting from a gritty urban environment to suburban California and put a disco spin on the music.
The current production takes the process much further, with an approach that reads as an index of how American pop culture has plundered and re-styled its immediate past. The Dick Clarkish disk jockey Vince Fontaine (Brian Bradley) has been reincarnated as a New Wave D.J-cum-M.C., who oversees the evening in a suit that Elvis Costello might wear to play Vegas. And there is an abundance of archly naive, two-dimensional visuals that evoke the advertising graphics of MTV and Nickelodeon.
There is also a sequence in which two players act out the ingenuously ribald love duet "Mooning" as blue-haired, 1970's-vintage punks behind a white picket fence, and a slumber party scene in which the musical's bad-girl sorority, the Pink Ladies, are attired in nighties that suggest lower-rent versions of costumes from "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public." And for fans of the movie, the soap opera heartthrob Ricky Paull Goldin, as super greaser Danny Zuko, has provided a slavish imitation of John Travolta's performance.
This " Grease! " is less a traditional musical than environmental funhouse theater or an animated jukebox. The arriving audience will find a pre-curtain show already in progress, with Vince Fontaine spinning classic 1950's records, strutting the aisles, spouting hipster patter, pulling theatergoers out of their seats to dance and generally whipping the audience into a pre-conditioned lather. The process is repeated at intermission and, bizarrely enough, in the middle of the second act, when a little girl is dragged on stage to be-bop with Fontaine to Bobby Day's recording of "Rockin' Robin."
The song is one of two genuine period numbers in the show; the other is the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You," which is sung by the musical's white-bread, virginal heroine Sandy (Susan Wood). They have apparently been added to compensate for the loss of the top-40 hits written for the movie, which were sacrificed when Mr. Stigwood, who controls the rights to them and was originally (with Barry and Fran Weissler) a co-producer of the revival, pulled out of the show.
The idea seems to be that if the music is relentless and loud enough the audience will be swept into an irresistible, rhythmic tidal wave, and the crowd does indeed roar like groupies at a Beatles concert. (You'll find your foot keeping time, in a Pavlovian way.) But the effect is to blur the distinction between parody and prototype. Every number -- including the promising soul interpretation of "Beauty School Dropout," performed by a Little Richard-like Teen Angel (Billy Porter) -- suffers from overkill. And the sly, sassy musical satire of songs like "Summer Nights" and "Freddy, My Love" nearly evaporates.
Mr. Calhoun's choreography is less about dance than about props, which are used in configurations of people holding tires, flashlights and luminous Hula
Hoops. The liveliest bona fide dancing comes from Sandra Purpuro, as the exotic outsider at the senior prom, and members of the audience.
The show's nominal star, Rosie O'Donnell, a winning film actress, may also be a winning stage actress, but you can't tell it from this. As the salty-mouthed, promiscuous Betty Rizzo, she affects a stiff, Alfred Hitchcock walk and a droll, deadpan delivery that conveys the character's tough defensiveness with none of her exuberant carnality.
Like nearly every other member of the cast, she is trapped in a cartoon straitjacket. Only Sam Harris, who transcends the homogenizing effects of amplification with a radiant version of "Those Magic Changes," and the winsome Jessica Stone, as the beauty school dropout, actually seem human.
Mr. Tune, Mr. Calhoun and Mr. and Mrs. Weissler obviously conceived this revival with the intention of replicating the success of "Tommy," which turned a 1960's rock opera into a slickly intelligent commentary on the era that spawned it. But this " Grease! " is a strained pastiche of a pastiche that was always two-dimensional anyway.
Grease
Book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey; directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun; sets by John Arnone; costumes by Willa Kim; lighting by Howell Binkley; sound by Tom Morse; musical direction by John McDaniel; production stage manager, Craig Jacobs. The Tommy Tune production presented by Barry and Fran Weissler and Jujamcyn Theaters, in association with Pace Theatrical Group, the Broadway Fund and TV Asahi. At the Eugene O'Neill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, Manhattan.
Vince Fontaine . . . Brian Bradley
Danny Zuko . . . . . Ricky Paull Goldin
Sandy Dumbrowski . . Susan Wood
Betty Rizzo . . . . Rosie O'Donnell
Doody . . . . . . . Sam Harris
Frenchy . . . . . . Jessica Stone
Cha-Cha Degregorio . Sandra Purpuro
Teen Angel . . . . . Billy Porter
Miss Lynch . . . . . Marcia Lewis
Patty Simcox . . . . Michelle Blakely
Eugene Florczyk . . Paul Castree
Jan . . . . . . . . Heather Stokes
Marty . . . . . . . Megan Mullally
Roger . . . . . . . Hunter Foster
Kenickie . . . . . . Jason Opsahl
Sonny Latierri . . . Carlos Lopez
WITH: Clay Adkins, Melissa Bell, Patrick Boyd, Katy Grenfell, Ned Hannah, Janice Lorraine Holt, Denis Jones, Allison Metcalf, H. Hylan Scott 2d, Lorna Shane
