In this musical written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, it is 1959 and Rydell high is crowded with defiant, fun-loving students. In the middle of the film a girl named Sandy arrives at the school and it turns out that her and the gang leader in the school Danny have had a brief love affair. While sandy tells her friends about the emotional involvement of the relationship Danny tells his friends about the sexual side. As the show progresses the kids at Rydell High have to deal with issues surprising to people who have a romanticized view of the 1950’s; love, gang violence, teen pregnancy, and friendship.This play had elements of the realistic and the non-realistic. It dealt with very real themes such as teen pregnancy, bullying, peer pressure, drinking, and gang violence. The non-realistic bits were obviously the musical numbers. In real life, we do not just burst into song because we broke up with a boyfriend or girlfriend or had a teenage romance. The sets of this play were not what I would call realistic. They attempted realism but it seemed as if the budget of the play and the way it had to be staged left them with no choice but leave it slightly abstract.
This play was very entertaining. There were a few elements of it that could be taken as social messages such as the drinking and rebelliousness that resulted in a pregnancy scare for one of the characters. The playwright and director seemed to work in beautiful harmony for this production. You could see that there was a lot of effort put into the acting and the direction. The letter from the artistic director that was printed in the front of the program gave a small amount of background. For someone who was not familiar with the work it would have helped them to perhaps understand a little bit more of the motivation behind the play.
Over all the film was good and the actors were very good and I enjoyed watching the film.
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