TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

There isn’t much I can say about the show this week that I didn’t mention Last Week. This week saw another set of open auditions, another set of the hopelessly embarrassing, another set of the talented without “the look,” and another set of hopefuls for the Grease Academy.

This week, the Palace Theater on Broadway played hosted the open audition. The fare was much the same as last week, with our applicants including a couple who wanted to enter the competition together, a 42-year old mother of four from Brooklyn, a Rockville Centre Bridge & Tunnel (for non-NYers, that refers to people from Long Island, the outer-boroughs, or New Jersey. It’s said with much more contempt when it refers to a teenage meathead with rich parents and a trust fund. More contempt is added if you’re in the West 20s or Penn Station on a Friday or Saturday night after said B&T’s have been “clubbing” all night. AJ Soprano and his gaggle would be your stereotypical B&T) troll who really has nothing going for him other than look, a pro from the touring version of Hairspray, and various other moderately uninteresting to wholly uninteresting stories.

Thankfully, this is the last week of open auditions as the show is exactly the same as last week. The guys and girls sing, collectively, about five songs from the show, then the survivors come back to dance the next day. For comic relief, we get a mother from Brooklyn who goes to the auditions with a decent voice but, surprise, she isn’t cast because she’s 40. For your tear-jerking moment of the say, we get a 16-year old girl from Staten Island who doesn’t look the part (as she’s overweight), sound the part (as she can’t sing), nor would ever be cast in the part (as she’s 16). For your cheaply manufactured drama, we get a boyfriend and girlfriend of two years entering together. He makes it, she does not. She storms off into the subway and we are informed that their relationship ended shortly afterward.

Now, my personal loathing of B&T’s aside, here is another issue I have with this show. The set-up is this: an untrained singer from Rockville Centre, Long Island came to the open audition. He was way, way, WAY out of his league even during an audition. He couldn’t go up in register and his voice broke down. He couldn’t move on stage to the degree required to be in the musical. Frankly, he’s not going to win. For the reasons I mentioned last week, this show, by it’s design, can’t have plucky underdogs to win despite all odds. When you put this guy up against, for instance, the guy who’s on the Hairspray touring cast, he’s going to get ruined. Taking one standard Italian-looking greaser over any other standard Italian-looking greaser with talent is a waste. He’s not going to win, and it’s disgustingly obvious that he’s there only to be a story.

As I said, not much to say this week, so we’ll hold off until next week which, according to the previews, is the first of the “Grease Academy” shows. Also, according to the previews, my prediction from last week’s column was correct. The previews are just loaded with tears and agony.

While I still have no idea how eliminations will work once they get to “Grease Boot Camp” I’m still interested. Thank God we’re moving on to the next stage, though.