Grease
OPENING: February 14, 1972
CLOSING: April 13, 1980
Seen: April 1974
LOCATION: Royale Theatre
Happy Valentine’s Day, Theatre Kids.
It’s very appropriate that this entry falls so close to Valentine’s Day. Our next show opened on Valentine’s Day in 1974. And one of the most iconic lines from it sums up how I feel about all of you:
You’re the one that I want, you are the one I want!
Yup – I am talking about Grease. And the timing of this is perfect, since it’s opening night was February 14, 1972, which means this entry is also celebrating 51 years since the show’s Broadway opening
So what can I write about this behemoth of a show that you, my awesome Theatre Kids, don’t already know?
Let’s take a stab at this.
When writers are learning to write, there is one phrase that keeps coming back to them. That phrase is “Write What You Know.” In the case of the entries I have already written, this most definitely worked for Hair and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Jim Jacobs took a stab at this as well, turning his experiences at William Taft High School in Chicago into a musical.
The original Chicago was gritty. One complaint I often hear about stage productions of Grease – other than the insanely high licensing fees to produce it – is how raunchy it is compared to the movie, which was severely sanitized for it’s 1978 film audiences. According to BroadwayWorld, the Chicago version was even raunchier than the version that made it to New York in 1972.
The show was noticed in Chicago by producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox, who thought that was a fun piece of nostalgia. So, on Valentine's Day 1972, Grease, which had the Chicago edge taken off and *slightly* sanitized, Grease opened at the Eden Theatre.
The Eden, which is now the Village East by Angelika movie theater on 2nd Avenue, was technically an Off-Broadway theater. However, the hype surrounding Grease was so high that it was given a Broadway designation despite opening at an Off-Broadway house. It moved to the Broadhurst on June 7th for it’s “Official” opening. However, despite this non-traditional opening, all the sources I have seen say that the true opening was February 14. It would play a total of four theatres total over the course of it’s run.
Reviewer Clive Barnes, from everything I read, was a hard-ass reviewer. He was not impressed by what he saw on opening night, calling it “A thin joke” and that it was “loud-mouthed and facetious tastelessness” (Barnes, 1972). He does, however, end the review saying that the audiences thoroughly enjoyed the show, so he was thought perhaps it could do well despite what he thought of it.
Funny how that turned out, isn’t it?
It didn’t do very well at the Tony’s. A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum and On the Town were revived that year. The Public, less than ten years separated from the success of it’s inaugural production of Hair, has set Two Gentlemen of Verona to music and transferred it to Broadway. It was also the year that Jesus Christ Superstar and Follies made their grand entrances to the theater scene. It was an eclectic mix of shows, but it was very much a comment of the changing landscape of Broadway.
Personally, I think the most interesting aspect of Grease’s run was the replacements that filled these iconic roles. When my dad saw it in 1974, none of the notable replacements were currently in the cast. But during the run, the likes of Judy Kaye (Les Mis, Fun Home) played Rizzo; Marilu Henner (TV’s Taxi) played Marty; and Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing), Treat Williams (TV’s Everwood), Adrian Zmed (Blood Brothers), and Peter Gallagher (Guys and Dolls, On the Twentieth Century, TV’s Covert Affairs) all at one point played Danny. Mind you, these are only the people that I recognize without having to look up. But perhaps most notable was a young man who had toured as Doody and made the leap from the tour to Broadway. His name was John Travolta. He had auditioned for Danny but was deemed too young at the time. However, the producers liked him and gave him the role of Doody instead. The rest, as they say, is history.
Few shows have left quite the mark that Grease has. There have been very few times when I have gone to karaoke night and a couple of drunk singers have not requested Summer Lovin’. When the Tony’s couldn’t hold a ceremony in 2020, CBS aired the singalong version of the movie instead. Has any other show reached this level of notoriety? Maybe Annie. And maybe Hamilton is on it’s way there. Even so, it will be a very long time before another show permeates our culture quite the way Grease has.
CAST: REPLACEMENT
MISS LYNCH: Dorothy Leon
PATTY SIMCOX: Ilene Kristen
EUGENE FLORCZYK: Stephen Van Benschoten
JAN: Garn Stephens
MARTY: Meg Bennett
BETTY RIZZO: Elaine Petricoff
DOODY: James Canning
ROGER: Walter Bobbie
KENICKIE: Jerry Zaks
SONNY LATIERRI: Jim Borrelli
FRENCHY: Ellen March
SANDY DUMBROWSKI: Ilene Graff
DANNY ZUKO: Jeff Conaway
VINCE FONTAINE: Walter Charles
JOHNNY CASINO: Bob Garrett
CHA-CHA DI GREGORIO: Kathi Moss
TEEN ANGEL: Bob Garrett
UNDERSTUDIES: Adele Page, Joy Rinaldi, Alaina Warren, Philip Casnoff, John Everson, Malcolm Groome
Bordman, Gerald. “American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle.” New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1978.
Barnes, Clive. “Theater: ‘Grease,’ 1959 as Nostalgia”. New York Times, February 15, 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/15/archives/theater-grease-1959-as-nostalgia-rock-musical-at-eden-comes-from.html?searchResultPosition=3
Funke, Lewis. “Yesterday? Yes.” New York Times, October 31, 1971. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/31/archives/yesterday-yes-the-rialto-yesterday-yes.html?searchResultPosition=23
Internet Broadway Database. “Grease” www.ibdb.com. Accessed February 2023.
Internet Movie Database. “Grease” www.ibdb.com. Accessed February 2023.
Kerr, Walter. “You Tell Me Your Dream…No, Don’t!” New York Times, February 27, 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/27/archives/you-tell-me-your-dream-no-dont.html
Riedel, Michael. “John Travolta’s Disastrous Audition And Other Tales of Making “Grease”. New York Post, June 9, 2022. https://nypost.com/2022/06/09/john-travoltas-disastrous-audition-and-other-tales-of-making-grease/
Spiegal, Alexa. “Feature: GREASE is Still the Word! A Brief History of GREASE from Chicago to LIVE!” Broadwayworld.com. January 31, 2016. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-Feature-GREASE-Is-Still-The-Word-A-Brief-History-of-GREASE-from-Chicago-to-LIVE-20160131#:~:text=The%20original%20production%20of%20GREASE,book%2C%20lyrics%2C%20and%20music.
Tony Awards. www.tonyawards.com. Accessed February 2023.
