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Blogs by Jerome Parisse
Grease.... or a failed English test 10/18/2010 5:00:52 PM
Last night I saw Grease, the musical, at the Hong Kong Lyric Theatre. We went with a large group of friends, which was part of the fun. The Lyric Theatre is not a very big theatre, which is fine, except that for a musical, I tend to prefer big, visual performances. Grease was fun to watch and took me more than thirty years back when I was sitting an English language test. The teacher said to the class something in English, which he asked us to translate into French. We were thirteen years old and had only been learning English for about six months or so, so we had no idea what he had just said. He decided to give us a clue and said, “This is the title of a song that can be heard on the radio every ten minutes at the moment.” Suddenly all the girls in the class got really busy and started scribbling things down ,while we boys were at a loss about what it all meant. What the teacher had said was, “You’re the one that I want”, the title of the famous movie song. Of course, all the girls got it right and we boys failed miserably. We were fuming and accused our teacher of discrimination and of being totally unfair. That’s when I started paying attention to English songs. Of course, Olivia Newton-John is Australian and I am now one of her fellow countrymen, which makes the song even more special for me. And yes, I have forgiven my English teacher.
Last night’s performance was of good quality and the dancing and signing were (technically) fine. I must admit however that I found it missed emotion. It was fun, great to watch, and the audience did participate, but for me it lacked that special thing that makes you never forget a show. No big names, as far as I know, in the supposedly “spectacular international cast”. The girl who played Sandy really looked like Newton-John, especially at the end when she leaves behind her goodie-goodie persona. The guy who played Danny, on the other hand, was on the chubby side and looked more like John Travolta in his forties than in his twenties! Having said all of that, I had a great night. Hurry up if you want to see it, as it finishes on the 7th of November.
