Look at Me, I’m on TV!

You have to hand it to the Brits: They often get there first. A few years ago, they came up with Pop Idol, a TV talent show in which the winners were chosen by the viewing public. That concept was soon adapted into the U.S. phenomenon American Idol. Next, people all over the U.K. helped cast the leading female role in a West End revival of The Sound of Music via a TV show called How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

And now the pendulum has swung back stateside with Grease: You’re The One That I Want, which premieres on NBC this Sunday, January 7 (8:00-9:30pm, EST). As the end result of a nationwide talent search and competition, the show will yield two lucky individuals who’ll play Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski in a revival of Grease that’s slated to begin previews on July 24 at a theater sill to be formally announced. (According to published reports, the show will play the Brooks Atkinson.)

In addition to “Summer Nights,” “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” “We Go Together,” and other Jim Jacobs-Warren Casey favorites from the original score, the production will feature the songs that were written by others for the wildly popular 1978 film version of the musical: “You’re the One That I Want,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Sandy,” and the title tune.

Three pre-taped episodes of the TV show — the first two of which will feature Olivia Newton-John, who played Sandy in the movie — will be followed by six live broadcasts from Los Angeles during which the votes of the public will narrow down 12 semifinalists to the two winners. There will also be three on-air judges, à la American Idol: co-author Jacobs; Kathleen Marshall, who’ll direct and choreograph the new Grease; and David Ian, the main force behind the 1993 London production of the show and one of the producers of the forthcoming Broadway revival.

Whether this method of casting a Main Stem musical is a bold and brilliant initiative or an ill-advised stunt won’t really be known for sure until the show opens with its two instant stars. But Marshall, Jacobs, and Ian are excited by the process, as they said during a recent media teleconference. Here is an edited transcript of their remarks.

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JIM JACOBS: Grease was revived in 1994 on Broadway and ran for five years. The show has been playing almost everywhere in the world for 35 years, since it began. But this is a whole different kind of revival in that it’s being cast by the American public — the two lead roles, at least.

KATHLEEN MARSHALL: The show has always been a launching pad for new talent. Hopefully, we’re not only going to find two wonderful people to play Danny and Sandy, but maybe we’ll create two stars who’ll go on to have long Broadway careers.

DAVID IAN: I think it’s pretty clear that we would be able to cast a Danny and Sandy in the normal way, but this is an exciting new way of doing it. And Grease is one of those very few shows where I think the public [has] very strong opinions as to who the leads should be. Involving them in that search adds to the excitement. And what’s more logical? We producers spend most of our time trying to cast people that the public will adore, so why not ask them in the first place? We had a fair clutch of the weird and the wonderful [at the open calls], some very talented, untrained people and some trained people as well — especially in New York, as you might imagine.

MARSHALL: The weird part is telling people directly what you think of their performance. At a Broadway audition, it’s usually ‘Thank you very much’ and then we discuss amongst ourselves; we don’t tell them to their faces what we think of them. That’s been a little tricky for me. [On the other hand], it’s a good thing to be able to say to a young performer, “You’re talented, but you’re not this part,” or “You’ve got raw talent, but you need more training.” There is definitely a Gong Show aspect [to the open calls]; some people who have no business coming to the audition show up just to get on TV. But, quite honestly, you get that on Broadway too — people who aren’t right for a role, but thought they’d give it a shot anyway.

JACOBS: David, Kathleen, and I all started as performers, so we maybe have the flair to be entertaining, but we also have suffered the slings and arrows that these people are going through. We’re not trying to be nasty just to make the audience laugh at them; we feel for these people because we’ve been there ourselves.

IAN: I’d really like to think that I’m the brutally honest one as opposed to the nasty one. But we tell it like it is, Kathleen, Jim, and I. You have to keep in mind that all three of us do this for a living. The fact that a TV show is covering us doing it is all well and good, but we’re not turning into characters for the sake of the TV program.

MARSHALL: The choice [of the two leads] is out of our hands once we go on the air live with the 12 people we’ve picked, but it’s part of our responsibility to help guide the public. Somebody may look great up close on television, but if they don’t have the kind of presence to project to the back of a Broadway house, that’s going to be a problem. Also, we’re casting a couple — so not only do they have to be good individually, there has to be chemistry between them as a pair.

IAN: Grease was written about people that Jim grew up with and went to school with. In Chicago, we saw some kids that were the real thing. They went to the equivalent of Rydell High; they went to the Burger Palace where Jim hung out with his friends. We got to see ordinary kids off the street who might have the talent for Broadway but are not trained, New York theatrical-type folk. They’ve still got to be able to do it, to follow Kathleen’s direction and choreography and have the kind of quality that the public expects from a Broadway performance. But what you get from those people is a reality that’s not quite there with trained theater folk.

JACOBS: When the show first began in 1971 at a community theater in Chicago, one of the first people who came to see it after word leaked out to the coasts was Michael Bennett. There was the possibility of him directing it if it went to New York, but he said, “I would bow out because I’d ruin it. The charm of this show is the raw, crude energy that these kids exude on stage. It’s a diamond in the rough, and that’s not my style.”

MARSHALL: We’re in the process of casting the rest of the roles, and there will be other people making their Broadway debuts alongside this Danny and Sandy.

IAN: Don’t forget that the rest of the cast, by definition, are going to be young anyway. These are high school kids. Nobody in the cast other than Miss Lynch is going to have huge Broadway experience, because one would hope that they’re no more than in their early 20s.

JACOBS: The unique irony of this whole thing is that the real unknowns we find in the talent search are going to come into a Broadway cast as already established TV stars.