GREASE IS THE WORD!
Grease is the first collaboration between the new Heads of Music and Drama and it has been exciting seeing the production come together. We have had great fun with the choreography and for some in the cast who had never seen Grease, it has been an education!
Grease has become iconic – a loving and cheeky homage to the 1950’s. With its famous songs and distinctive aesthetic, it has become a smash hit globally. Dreamt up in the 1960’s by an advertising copywriter, Jim Jacobs, and a high-school art teacher, Warren Casey, they wanted to recapture the spirit of teenage cliques and the doo-wop songs of the 1950’s. They called it ‘Grease’, because of the greasy food, engines and of course, the quiffs. And it seems these are as popular with the boys today as they were back then.
Grease is a story about a bunch of ne'er do well teens, who work through their last year of high school, establishing a pecking order and navigating the heartbreaks and romances of their first loves. In great tradition, whilst the course of true love never did run smooth, this musical hit sees everything right in the end: the T-birds and Pink Ladies pair, and there is even hope for the likes of Patty and Eugene!
The musical opened on February 5 in 1971, in a former trolley barn in Chicago, before transferring to off-Broadway in New York. Cut to 1976, the flashy man-about-town, big-guns producer, Allan Carr saw the potential to make this into a film hit with Paramount and signed a 22-year old John Travolta as Danny Zuko. It was Travolta who saw the potential in his Australian screen partner, Olivia Newton John, and filming began in California. It hit the big screen in June 1978 and was a massive success. It brought in $9.3 million in its first week and has grossed $400 million on its $6 million budget.
Since then it has seen more than 123,000 stage productions and we are very happy to bring this one to The Athenaeum Centre next month. To secure your tickets please purchase via The Athenaeum Website. Tickets are available on 17, 18 and 19 November.
Emily Harris, Head of Drama