“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” says Shakespeare’s Brutus in “Julius Caesar.” And Tommy Kail has caught one that is carrying him to the crest in both theater and television. The director of “Hamilton,” the Broadway blockbuster, significantly amped up his star power as the co-director (with Alex Rudzinski) of “Grease: Live!,” the Fox television special that scored high marks from the critics and a ratings bonanza from the public when it aired on January 31.The television version, based both on the 1972 Broadway musical and the 1978 musical-film classic, drew 12.2 million viewers, which outclassed the December airing on NBC of “The Wiz Live!” (11.5 million). Only NBC’s “The Sound of Music Live!”, which began the run of live musicals in 2013, had a higher rating (18.6 million), although “Grease” apparently beat that stunning rating in the 18-49 demographic.The reviews for the production — which boasted fourteen sets fanned out over 20 acres — were largely favorable, especially for Kail, the 38-year-old director who made his Broadway debut with “In the Heights,” the 2008 Tony-winning musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, his fellow Wesylan University Alumnus. Their collaboration continued with “Hamilton,” whose ticket sales advance has reportedly topped an unprecedented $100 million. Indeed, the reviews for “Grease” were so effusive in singling out Kail for lavish praise that one might have thought the critics were angling for house seats to “Hamilton.”“Aaron Tveit and Julianne Hough had their name above the ‘Grease: Live’ title, re-creating the roles made famous on screen by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. But it was future ‘Hamilton’ Tony winner Kail who was the biggest star on Sunday night,” gushed the Hollywood Reporter.It would have been surprising had the show not drawn huge ratings. After all, “Grease,” a good-girl-gone-bad fable set in 1959 at Rydell High, has long been one of the most popular titles for high school, college, and amateur theaters. The musical, which has had two previous Broadway revivals in 1994 and 2007, was cleaned up for its Fox presentations with such lyrics as “The chicks’ll cream” changed to “The chicks’ll scream” for the song “Greased Lightning.” And that was one of the tamer vulgarisms in a show that celebrates the loosening of America’s puritanical straitjacket of the 1950s.The success of “Grease” means that the trend of musicals being adapted for television will continue unabated. Fox has announced two more: Tyler Perry’s “The Passion,” a live event centered on the Christian Holy Week to air on Palm Sunday, and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” starring Laverne Cox and Adam Lambert. The latter, directed, choreographed, and co-produced by Kenny Ortega (“High School Musical”) will be aired as a two-hour taped special. Not to be outdone, NBC recently announced that their next annual holiday special would be a live production of “Hairspray,” the 2002 Tony-winning Broadway musical that was based on John Waters’s outré 1988 movie. The 2007 movie adaptation, like the film of “Grease,” starred John Travolta, albeit this time in ample-figured drag.Meanwhile, Kail is now in the midst of rehearsals for Sarah Burgess’s new drama “Dry Powder,” which runs from March 1 through April 10 at the Public Theater, where both “Fun Home” and “Hamilton” were developed. It stars John Krasinski, as Seth, a managing director at an Equity firm doing damage control in the midst of ruthless downsizing and tempting takeover targets that require yet more cutthroat capitalist tactics.
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