Grease is the Word
This evening started as something of a madcap race against time – to get home, eat dinner, wash up, and then head out to our middle daughter's school to watch their production of Grease (which she had a bit-part in). We'll try to forget that I then had to race back home, hook up the work laptop, and put another couple of hours in fire-fighting a live client system that somehow went straight from development to live with no testing in-between.
The show was amazing. Even though the microphones on the principal cast kept failing, and the band sometimes drowned out the singing, there were moments of magic. I'll freely admit to a wibbly lip moment as the entire cast left the stage at the end, singing repeated choruses of “We'll always be together”.
I grew up listening to and watching the movie of “Grease” starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. My Dad bought a video cassette recorder in the mid 1980s, and the first two tapes we ever snapped the “record” tab on were a recording of “Star Wars” from the television at Christmas, and a recording of “Grease” that we borrowed from my aunt (who was only a few years older than us, in the bizarre way that families often work out).
We watched “Grease” until the tape fell to pieces – the entire movie is baked into my subconscious, along with Star Wars, Life of Brian, The Holy Grail, and various other “canon” movies that you might class as “required viewing for people of my era”. Tonight was therefore a huge trip down memory lane, aided and abetted by a wonderful cast, who were no doubt bricking it in front of an audience of adults for the first time (the shake-down performance had been in front of their peers).
I couldn't help wondering during the show how the various parts are cast in school productions – particularly in important ones where the school has paid a considerable sum of money for the performance rights. This was news to me by the way – I was genuinely shocked at how much the school had to pay out. I'm not saying the leads were bad – just that one girl in particular was a far better singer than anybody else, and she wasn't the lead.
Anyway. Great show, and so proud of all the kids that took part. Now where's our DVD of Grease gone ?