An R-Rated Rydell

These days, you may be more likely to forget the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner before forgetting the lyrics to your favorite song from the classic musical Grease. It's certainly hard to imagine anyone living in America who's never at least seen the 1978 film version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. Grease is also perhaps the most often produced musical of the past fifty years, so whenever a theater company decides to mount it once again, audiences come with expectations. The American Theater Company in Chicago concludes its twenty-sixth season with The Original Grease, a new production of an old script written by two Chicago natives Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey.

Chicago and Grease have an interesting history together. In early 1970, two emerging actors started composing a musical based on their teenage years living on the Northwest Side of Chicago, set to the music of the 1950s. After the artistic director of the former Kingston Mines Theatre heard some of the catchy songs Jacobs and Casey had penned, she decided to give their show a one-weekend run in her season. In January 1971, Grease opened and was a smash hit in Chicago and ran for another eight months. This original production of Grease was much edgier than even the Broadway script we know today. In fact, it was a hardly a musical at all, the first production was more like a play with incidental music. A couple of Broadway producers happened to see Grease and decided that with a few changes it would make a great musical. "We took a three-quarter book, one-quarter music show and turned it into a three-quarter music, one-quarter book show," said Jacobs, "Lets make it more about singing and dancing and not so much gang fights." Through several rewrites before its Broadway debut, all of the copious Chicago references were dropped and almost all of the music was rewritten including the number Foster Beach which became Summer Nights. Grease opened on Broadway in 1972 and ran until 1980, and has been revived and toured almost constantly since.

For their revival of Grease, the American Theater Company and Jim Jacobs worked together to restore the original script of that first production in 1971 from drafts that have been held for years in the Harold Washington Library archives. This version is much more reliant on dialogue to tell its story, and there's more story here to tell than what subsequent rewrites filtered out. The relationship between Danny and Sandy is still a large plot thread but considerably less prominent than Rizzo's pregnancy scare which becomes the crux of Act II. Patty Simcox, a character largely excluded from the film is even bigger in this production as her relationship with Danny is much more fleshed out. The characters are much more realistic in their dialogue, chock full of the f-word and other filthy obscenities, initially more true to how Chicago street-kids would have talked in the late 1950s. For instance, when Jan says to Sandy during the pajama party, "If she screws up she can always fix your hair so your ears don't show," the restored text changes it back to, "If she fucks up-." In addition to being more rude and crude, there are some characters that modern Grease enthusiasts won't recognize as they were written out for the Broadway production, Miller for instance is one of the Burger Palace Boys that didn't make the final cut but is fully restored in this version. That's right, before they were T-Birds they were the Burger Palace Boys. The score is another notable change as the new songs written for the Broadway version are replaced with the original rockabilly inspired songs Warren and Casey wrote. You may recognize a few of the reorchestrated numbers, including a much racier version of Greased Lightnin,' but most are exclusive to this production of The Original Grease.

The American Theater Company is surely showing off their budget for this show. Space in this 200-seat theater is limited and ordinarily their sets are minimal, but in this production ATC makes great use of the intimate nature of their auditorium. One would expect that with a feel-good show like Grease that the set would be full of bright colors and hot lights but ATC's artistic team decided to go in the opposite direction. The set is intricate but for the most part pretty dark, using a lot of dark greens and black. Taking the idea of an auto-shop class, the set looks like a garage, complete with the front-end and the back-end of a vintage VW Bug, adorning both sides of the multi-leveled stage. There's also an entire bathroom set constructed above the back of the audience that's only used briefly. The actors use all 360 degrees of the theater with some numbers taking place in the aisles. The set looks authentic and very Grease, though it hardly changes throughout the show, you never have a hard time placing the characters or events because the props are vivid and plentiful. The costumes are another thing done exceedingly well in this production, they're colorful and authentic to 1950s Chicago, you won't find a poodle skirt here, which have become cliched costume choice for Grease throughout the years. Even the Pink Ladies jackets are toned down, accurately showing the working class background being portrayed. Another awesome asset this show has is the live band, inconspicuously tucked away among the set pieces.

The show starts off by unnerving the audience. In the latest revivals and tours, the song Grease written for the film by Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees, has been the opener, but even that is a major change since the original Broadway production. The Original Grease starts with the 50th reunion of Rydell class of 1959 led by age appropriate actress Susan Fay who vamps by selecting random audience members to dance with her on stage. Fay's commitment to this cheeky character make this portion scary for audience members with stage fright. Sandy Dombrowski is played by Kelly Davis Wilson who brings a lot of life to the do-gooder character especially in scenes of conflict between Danny Zucko, but her biggest fault is her operatic voice simply does not fit in with the rock-n-roll sound of Grease and she struggles to find the balance. Rizzo played by Jessica Diaz leads the Pink Ladies but tends to overact her lines in Act I but truly shows her vocal and acting range in Act II during her solo There Are Worse Things I Could Do. The rest of the Ladies are played by Jessie Fisher who takes the character of Frenchy in an adorable and refreshing new direction as well as the sultry-voiced Carol Rose who plays Marty up a bit more to the forefront in her solo Freddy My Love. Jan is hilariously played by Sedieh Rifai. The Pink Ladies are each more distinct than the Burger Palace Boys, underwhelmingly led by Adrian Aguilar as Danny Zucko. Aguilar could have been sexier and more natural. Teen Angel played by Bryan Connor is the biggest miss of the night with his awkward rendition of Beauty School Dropout. There's a lot of energy in this cast and they make it a blast to watch. The ensemble tends to shine the most during group numbers especially in a striking a capella version of We Go Together closing the first act.

The sharp dialogue of The Original Grease is what separates this production from the rest. Occasionally the story gets a little cheesy with the reunion scenes but it's still considerably less saccharine than the film. The story and characters are made much deeper and the play becomes more serious with the sense of a playwright, even Sandy's drastic transformation at the end is much more logical due to a more complex relationship with Rizzo. For as much fun as this R-Rated version is, for those of us who grew up with the movie Grease this production leaves you wanting a little something more. The dance sequence is great as it always is in any production but what is Grease without You're the One that I Want? For one thing, audiences will learn a lot more about the characters they fell in love with in the film but it raises the question, would Grease be as iconic if this script was all we knew of it?

The American Theater Company's production of The Original Grease is well directed by PJ Paparelli and the cast is a lot of fun to watch. The overall theme of this show is that like its characters it doesn’t give a f@*k what you think of it. See what Chicago was like in a simpler time: the 1950s seen from the vantage point of the 1970s. Though this may not look or sound like the Grease you know so well, nevertheless it’s a fascinating look at the first draft of an American classic.