As the title song goes, “Grease is the word,” and the new revival of the beloved 1970s rock musical, which focuses on two teens from different sides of the tracks seeking acceptance and each other at Rydell High in the 1950s, is certainly a crowd-pleaser. This rendition features all four songs written for the movie adaptation, brought to the stage for the first time. Additionally, the two leads — unknowns Max Crumm as Danny Zuko and Laura Osnes as Sandy Dumbrowski — were picked from a reality television show (Grease – You’re The One That I Want!), which aired on NBC earlier this year.
While the television show pulled in “only” a few million viewers, not a success by network television standards, it was quite a boon to the production. Ticket sales have been strong, and the enthusiastic response to the stars from the throng of fans flocking to the stage door after the show certainly is a testimony to the power of even a moderately successful television show.
Tackling this famed show certainly requires a crew with years of experience and theatre background. Interestingly enough, Grease Scenic Designer Derek McLane — who has designed for The Threepenny Opera, I Am My Own Wife, and the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center, among many other shows — was not familiar with the original production. “I have never seen Grease on stage before,” he admits, “and did not look at photos of prior productions until after I had come up with my own ideas. I had seen the movie a few times. I think the thing that stuck with me the most from the movie is the way in which the locations and sets transform, turning from ordinary places into fantasies.”
While such unreal elements certainly could not have been replicated onstage — particularly Danny and Sandy driving into the sky at the end of the John Travolta/Olivia Newton-John film — McLane took a colorful, yet grounded in realism approach to recreating and spoofing the ‘50s, even offering a touch of the surreal in the Teen Angel sequence. “Grease is so beloved by so many people that the biggest challenge for me was to meet people’s expectations and still design something new and fresh,” states the Obie-winning designer.
Two important scenes in the musical feature two locations onstage simultaneously. The second scene and number in Grease, “Summer Nights,” is split between the school cafeteria, where the girls are talking about what they did over the summer, and the front steps, where the boys are sharing their stories. McLane wanted the cafeteria and front steps to have “fairly equal prominence,” he says. “The front steps have more dimension, but the cafeteria has more color and lights up, so they kind of balance each other out. ‘Summer Nights’ is a back-and-forth song, a kind of ping-pong match between the girls and boys, and I was going for a split-screen effect, like in the movie Pillow Talk.”
The first three songs in the opening to the second act — “Shakin’ at the High School Hop,” “It’s Raining on Prom Night” and “Born to Hand Jive” — take place in the school gym during a dance. While all the main characters are flirting and dancing up a storm and being judged by a popular local radio DJ, Sandy sits alone in her room listening to the broadcast. This sequence was the most difficult set piece for McLane to design.“It was a challenge to come up with something that told the story of a high school dance, yet didn’t feel like it had been done a million times before,” he remarks. “What I finally struck on, which I rather like, is all the crinkled cellophane — a material that was new and popular in the 1950s.” Then there was the contrast between the large gym and Sandy’s bedroom. McClane says, “The challenge here was slightly different: The dance is in progress, with many characters, and Sandy has to appear alone in her room. I made her room tiny” — she’s literally boxed in at stage left — “to help emphasize her aloneness.”
The famous scene where T-Bird member Kenickie transforms a beat-up lemon into a sparkling convertible was actually less difficult for McLane to take on. On top of the drastic automobile transformation, the scene is strongly driven by the propulsive song “Greased Lightnin’” (no pun intended). “[It was] not too hard — I pulled together a lot of research on old, rusty jalopies,” he explains of the car design process. “I also looked for cars that were about 15 years older in style than the final ‘Greased Lightnin’’ car. Then I started sketching.”
The production’s most eye-popping sequence takes place outside the Burger Palace, where Frenchy is lamenting the fact that she dropped out of high school only to quickly fail beauty school. At that moment, the suave, white-clad Teen Angel descends from a giant ice cream cone above the Palace. It opens up to reveal the heavenly hunk inside as he descends to tease Frenchy about her not-so-lofty aspirations. Thanks to the use of modern hydraulics, this scene was given a totally new lease on life.
“I am not sure how it was done originally,” says McLane. “[The first Teen Angel] Alan Hall states that he swung in on a rope in the original. ‘Beauty School Dropout’ is many people’s favorite song in Grease, and we wanted a surprising entrance for Teen Angel. It seemed like he should come from above, with its implications of heaven. I played around with several pieces of ‘50s Americana, looking at those fantastic diners and burger palaces of the period — giant slushies, soda bottles, hot dogs. But the ice cream cone seemed like the most fun. In my research, I also noted that in the 1950s there was an obsession with the atom and orbiting electrons — they appear in a huge amount of the advertising — so I decided to riff on that with having the hamburgers orbiting around their giant ice cream cone nucleus.”
All-in-all, the new Grease is a visually dynamic and spirited show, although in spite of its rather adult themes of teenage love, premarital sex, and pregnancy out of wedlock, it has been luring in families with young kids. Whatever one might want to think of how times have changed, or of the critical drubbing the show has received in much of the press (perhaps due to a backlash against its choice of casting), the music still gets people’s hands clapping and toes tapping. Playing into that adrenalized vibe, Grease’s current live band has been placed noticeably on a catwalk above the stage, with the keyboardist/band leader dancing up a storm while conducting the music.
“Grease has such an awesome rock ‘n’ roll score, and the energy of live sound — live, loud rock music is like nothing else,” declares McLane. “Putting the band in full view helps the audience experience that as live rock.”
And that’s the word.
