6A — Monday, February 8, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
Greenwell in A2

By ALLIE TAYLOR

For the Daily

On 
Monday, 
author 
Garth 

Greenwell will read a section of 
his debut novel, “What Belongs 
to You,” at Lite-
rati Bookstore. 
The novel draws 
from 
Green-

well’s four years 
living in Sofia, 
Bulgaria, where 
he taught Eng-
lish at a Bulgar-
ian high school. 
The main narra-
tive of the book 
describes a relationship between 
an American man living in Bel-
gium and a young Bulgarian man 

whom he meets and pays for sex, 
and how the relationship between 
the two men develops over the 
course of a few years.

Broken up into three parts, 

“Mitka,” “A Grave” and “Pox,” the 
book also explores the narrator’s 
childhood growing up in Ken-
tucky, where, in the early 1990’s, 
people felt as though their lives 
had no dignity if they admitted to 
being queer. 

“The structure of the book 

came from thinking about what 
it means to be a queer person in 
places like these,” Greenwell said 
in an interview with The Michi-
gan Daily.

All of the information that the 

reader learns about the narrator 
of the novel, who is never named, 

lines up with Greenwell’s personal 
autobiography.

“That’s the kind of game the 

book is playing,” Greenwell said. 
“It wants to explore the blurred 
space between fiction and autobi-
ography.”

Greenwell wrote this book over 

three years while in Bulgaria, 
waking up at 4:30 a.m. (two hours 
before he was to teach) and writing 
by hand in a notebook.

“It was the most private experi-

ence of my life,” he said. “To have 
this very private thing become 
public has been bizarre. It’s not 
quite like a journal, because I was 
thinking of it as art, but a very pri-
vate kind of art. But, it is similar in 
the sense that I really did feel like 
I was writing entirely without an 
audience, and therefore able to say 
and explore anything I wanted.”

Greenwell said that it was mov-

ing to see his book placed in a cat-
egory of books and writers — such 
as James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s 
Room” and Edmund White’s “A 
Boy’s Own Story” — that saved his 
life when he was a 16-year-old boy 
in Kentucky struggling with being 
queer.

“Those books told me my life 

had dignity,” he said. “And in Bul-
garia, that is still the case, that gay 
people are told one thing about 
their life: their lives have no dig-
nity and no value. I wanted to write 
a book that gave those lives dignity 
and that recognized the value that 
those lives and communities have.”

“What Belongs to You” has been 

incredibly well received, with The 
New York Times regarding it as 
“an instant classic,” and Publishers 
Weekly claiming that “it’s the first 
great novel of 2016.”

“It’s a surreal experience. The 

response is beyond anything I 
could have imagined or hoped 
for,” Greenwell said. “Shocked and 
bewildered is kind of what I feel.”

Read 
more 
online 
at 

michigandaily.com

TV REVIEW
FOX succeeds with 
superb ‘Grease: Live’

By ALEX INTNER

Daily Arts Writer

I wasn’t expecting much from 

“Grease: Live.” NBC, who brought 
back the format of the live musical 
a couple years 
ago with “The 
Sound 
of 

Music,” 
was 

coming off a 
production 
of 
“The 

Wiz” 
which 

brought in big 
numbers and 
earned critical 
acclaim. 
I 

questioned 
whether FOX could do something 
to even come close to that 
production, 
especially 
given 

that “Grease” is a fun musical 
without much substance and 
the dialogue scenes drag like 
nobody’s business. “Grease: Live” 
isn’t able to overcome all of the 
musical’s problems, but it is able 
to put the production quality of 
the NBC musicals to shame with 
pure energy and ambition.

This 
live 
production 
of 

“Grease” brings in elements 
from both the original stage 
production and the better-known 
movie adaptation. It opens with 
“Grease is the Word” and replaces 
“It’s Raining on Prom Night” and 
“Alone at the Drive-In” with 
“Hopelessly Devoted to You” 
and “Sandy,” respectively. It also 
includes “Those Magic Changes” 
from the musical, which is only 
an instrumental in the film. 
The book is reworked by Robert 
Cary and Jonathan Tolins (who 
worked on the latest Broadway 
revival of “On the Town”).

However, the live broadcast 

didn’t work through all of the 
musical’s problems, mainly its 

tedious book sequences. Especially 
in the first hour, the dialogue 
doesn’t have any energy or sense 
of direction. Scenes happen, but 
moments like Sandy (Julianne 
Hough, “Dancing with the Stars”) 
and Patty’s (Elle McLemore, 
“Army 
Wives”) 
cheerleading 

competition are slowly paced 
and way too long. (When you’re 
looking at 15 minutes between 
musical numbers, you can’t afford 
to have anything not work.)

FOX upped the game from 

NBC’s musicals in the sheer scale 
of the event. Director Thomas Kail 
(coming off directing the “little-
known” new musical “Hamilton”) 
was clearly given support to tell 
this story in a bold, audacious way. 
In the first number (“Grease is the 
Word”), the camera follows Jessie 
J around the show’s backstage 
areas before opening up into a 
massive outside set. The scale 
of the live action is much higher 
than anything NBC has done. In 
the dance scenes in the gym, the 
camera swoops around the room, 
capturing the gorgeous dance 
moves in a creative and ingenious 
manner. The production even 
makes the smaller numbers big, 
with usually forgotten songs 
like “Freddy My Love” (sung by 
Keke Palmer, “Scream Queens”) 
and “Those Magic Changes” 
(performed by Jordan Fisher, 
“Teen Beach Movie”) getting the 
full production number treatment.

The musical’s cast is filled with 

a wide range of names and talent. 
Aaron Tveit (“Graceland”) and 
Hough play Danny and Sandy 
respectively, and neither bring 
much to their parts. They’re 
charming and sing well, but 
I was hoping for a little more 
depth to their performances. Ana 
Gasteyer (“Saturday Night Live”) 
and Wendell Pierce (“The Wire”) 

have fun in the show’s thankless 
adult roles. The group that 
shines the most, though, are the 
Pink Ladies: Frenchy (Carly Rae 
Jepsen, who played Cinderella on 
Broadway), Marty (Palmer) and 
Jan (Kether Donohue, “You’re the 
Worst”). Each of them brings a 
sense of warmth and fun to their 
performances and have their own 
standout moments.

The MVP of the broadcast, 

though, 
is 
Vanessa 
Hudgens 

(“High School Musical 3: Senior 
Year”), who gives a career-
defining performance as Rizzo. 
Hudgens’s dad passed away from 
cancer the night before the show, 
but she’s still able to bring snark 
and sharpness to her character. 
Rizzo is the emotional core of 
the show, getting the only song 
where powerful thoughts and 
feelings are shared in “There are 
Worse Things I Could Do.” Just 
thinking about her delivery of 
“But to cry in front of you / That’s 
the worst thing I could do,” the 
closing line of the song, still sends 
chills down my spine and brings 
tears to my eyes. Just watch the 
performance; this is what live TV 
is all about.

By the end of “Grease: Live,” 

I’d forgotten about all my nitpicks 
and bought into the energy of 
the show. By the time the show 
was telling me that it was the 
one that I wanted and that we go 
together, I had a huge smile on 
my face, mostly because of what 
it was able to pull off in a live 
setting. The boldness of the big 
musical numbers and Hudgens’s 
performance more than made up 
for some of the earlier dragging.

NBC is planning to perform 

“Hairspray” in December, but 
they’ll be facing a new high 
standard. The game has just been 
changed. It’s your move, NBC.

B+

Grease: 
Live

Live Musi-
cal Event

FOX

Garth 
Greenwell 

February 
8, 7 p.m.

Literati

Free