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| Timothy Meyers, Adrienne Barbeau, Garn Stephens, Jim Borrelli, Katie Hanley, Marya Small, Barry Bostwick, James Canning, Walter Bobbie. |
GREASE [Musical/Period/Romance/School/Youth] B/M/LY: Jim Jacobs
and Warren Casey; D: Tom Moore; CH: Patricia Birch; S: Douglas W. Schmidt; C:
Carrie F. Robbins; L: Karl Eigsti; P: Kenneth Waissman and Maxine Fox; T: Eden Theatre
(OB); 2/14/72 (128); Broadhurst Theatre 6/7/72-11/21/72—Royale Theatre
11/21/72-4/13/80 (3260)—total 3,388
 |
| Ilene Kristen, Tom Harris, Dorothy Leon. |
Grease began life
in an impoverished Chicago basement theatre. When it came to hNew York, opening
Off Broadway on Second Avenue in the East Village, it took the town completely
by surprise, and quickly moved uptown to Broadway. Its reviews, largely
favorable, were not, however, the sort that would make history. This sleeper
must have shocked both its backers and its foes when it developed into what was
then Broadway’s longest running musical.
Of course, its eight-year record has
been far surpassed since then by a number of seemingly eternal presences
(albeit on hold because of Covid-19). It grossed many millions, was staged in
countless amateur and professional versions worldwide, enjoyed two Broadway
revivals, and had two movie adaptations. The producers, however, failed to repeat
the formula with any other show, though they tried, and the creators were never
represented on Broadway by another work.
 |
| Timothy Meyers, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Harris. |
Within the framework of a high school reunion for the class
of 1959 at Rydell High,
Grease brings
to vibratingly nostalgic life the fads, fashions, language, mores, and manners
of the lower echelons of teen life in the flirty 50s. A succession of
showstoppers, written as loving pastiches of popular old rock and roll songs,
made the piece especially appealing for audiences who had gone to high school
in the time represented (like me!). Even those born much later reveled in the
warm, funny, bawdy, and satiric evocation of that fondly remembered era. This
turn of events belied Clive Barnes’s lukewarm notice, in which he suggested
that only people who grew up in the 50s would enjoy its “deliberately
loudmouthed and facetious tastelessness. . . . Once the initial joke has been
established, it is bound to wear thin.”
 |
| Cast of Grease. |
A meager plot about a Sandra Dee-type of fresh-faced,
clean-cut, new girl in town, Sandy Dumbrowski (Carole Demas), and her troubles
with her local boyfriend, good-looking greaser Danny Zuko (Barry Bostwick),
allowed the introduction of a whole panoply of 50s’ adolescent pop clichés: hot
rods, DA hairdos, pointed wire bras, pajama parties, prom nights, dance
contests, mooning, bobby sox, drive-ins, and burger palaces.
 |
| Barry Bostwick, Carole Demas. |
Good girl Sandy eventually decides that the only way to hold
on to her motorcycle-jacketed Romeo is to join his sleazy crowd and behave just
as coarsely. Along the way come witty musical paeans to fast cars (“Greased
Lightning’”), bare-bottom demonstrations (“Mooning”), cosmetology (“Beauty
School Dropout”), and other cultural artifacts of bygone years. Among a panoply of now familiar tunes, fans delighted in "Summer Nights," "Those Magic Changres," "Freddy, My Love," "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee," "Born to Hand-Jive."
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| Katie Hanley, Jim Borrelli, Walter Bobbie, Timothy Meyers, Garn Stephens, Adrienne Barbeau, Barry Bostwick, James Canning, Marya Small. |
John Lahr felt the show never explored its assumptions, but
used them for “camp” fun, thus failing to do its subject justice. Michael
Feingold, however, declared that, if there was a purpose, it was to reveal “how
petty and squalid it really was.” He preferred to think of Grease as “fun, a diversion . . . never meant to be anything else.”
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| Walter Bobbie, Jim Borrelli, Timothy Meyers, James Canning, Barry Bostwick. |
Weaknesses jabbed at by others included a rambling,
unfocused book that neglected to maintain interest throughout, cheap and
unattractively profane characters (Martin Gottfried called them “shallow and
stupid”), repetitiousness, over-amplification, immoderate vulgarity, and
fondness for an era several critics remembered as impossibly dull.
 |
| Barry Bostwick, Walter Bobbie, Joy Garrett, James Canning,/ |
Grease’s “loud and
raucous” music, as Barnes dubbed it, was “often attractive” to Walter Kerr’s
ears, and “fraught with demented fun” in John Simon’s view. Gottfried, though,
thought it too devoted to mimicking the “corniest” period pop tunes and not the
best.
Some knew right away that Grease was a hit, among them Jack Kroll, who though it “hugely
entertaining,” and Douglas Watt, who called it “a winner” that rocked “with zip
and charm.” Few argued against Douglas W. Schmidt’s effective stage
design—the proscenium outlined in old high school album photos; Carrie Robbins’s
insightful, humorous costumes and hairdos, Tom Moore’s brilliantly realized
direction, and Pat Birch’s deliciously on-the-spot choreography. Among the
stunning performers, all obviously older than the roles they were playing,
Carole Demas, Barry Bostwick, Adrienne Barbeau (as Betty Rizzo), and Timothy
Meyers (as Kenickie), were most often singled out.
 |
| Garn Stephens,, Marya Small, Joy Garrett, Meg Bennett. |
The show garnered a pile of Tony nominations but won none of
them. They were for Best Musical (Two
Gentlemen of Verona won); Best Book of Musical (again, Two Gentlemen of Verona won); Leading Actor in a Musical (Barry
Bostwick lost to Phil Silvers in the revival of A Funny Thing . . . ); Featured Actor in a Musical (Timothy Meyers
lost to Larry Blyden in A Funny Thing . .
. ); Choreography (Patricia Birch lost to Michael Bennett for Follies); Costumes (Carrie Robbins lost
to Florence Klotz of Follies); and Featured
Actress in a Musical (Adrienne Barbeau lost to Linda Hopkins in Inner City). Barbeau did reap a Theatre
World Award, while Robbins was given the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising
Costume Designer.
