Grease - The New Broadway Cast Recording 2007 Broadway Revival Cast

Product Description

America has spoken! After 12 weeks of nationally televised auditions, 90 million viewers and millions of voters, LAURA OSNES and MAX CRUMM are the ones that America wants to play the iconic roles of "Sandy" and "Danny" in the new Broadway production of GREASE. The two winners were announced during the live finale episode of the NBC talent competitions series "GREASE: YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I WANT" on Sunday, March 25, 2007.

GREASE, by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, is the all-American musical, based on the sub-cultures of high school life in the 1950's. The show takes place at the hyperactive Rydell High School, where Danny Zuko fronts his gang - the raucous T-Birds - who romance their sassy female equivalents - the Pink Ladies. When the "good-girl" Sandy Dumbrowski arrives in town, the Pink Ladies take her under their collective wing.

In 1978, GREASE became "the word" with the hit feature-film adaptation starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as the lovelorn leads. A Broadway revival played from 1996 - 1998.

The new Broadway production will feature the smash Jacobs-Casey songs made famous by the original musical including "Summer Nights," "Greased Lightning" and "We Go Together" as well as the additional film songs "Grease is the Word," "You're The One That I Want," "Hopelessly Devoted to you" and "Sandy."

GREASE is now playing on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street.

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America spoke, and in the end, Laura Osnes and Max Crumm were voted in as the leads for the new revival of Grease that opened on Broadway in August 2007, five months after the close of the casting call/reality show, Grease: You're the One that I Want! Fortunately, "Small Town Sandy" and "Slacker Danny" prove that America did make the right choice, especially for their fans who remember them singing "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Sandy" during the competition with the runners-up (would-have-been-acceptable Ashley Spencer and talented-but-charmless Austin Miller). The irony with a cast recording, though, is that picking the leads is a bit of much ado about nothing since Grease gives so many of its big songs to the ensemble, all of whom are solid here: "Those Magic Changes" (sung by Ryan Patrick Binder as Doody), "Freddy, My Love" (Robyn Hurder as Marty), "Greased Lightnin'" (Matthew Saldivar as Kenickie), "Mooning" (Daniel Everidge and Lindsay Mendez as Roger and Jan), "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" and "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" (Jenny Powers as Rizzo), and "Beauty School Dropout" (Stephen R. Buntrock as Teen Angel). The question for cast-recording enthusiasts who didn't watch the reality show is, "Do I need another Grease?", just as the earlier question might have been, "Does Broadway need another Grease?", only a dozen years after the last revival. Grease: You're the One that I Want! was never really about what Broadway needed, of course--it was about what NBC needed to attract its Sunday-primetime audience, and that was a perennially popular musical with an iconic film and even a hit Disney Channel version (High School Musical). Compared to the 1972 original Broadway cast, the 1978 movie soundtrack, and the 1994-95 revival, this recording provides the best mix of songs from the stage and screen, and even if it's not essential, it's enjoyable and should hold up to repeat listenings. --David Horiuchi