Make an Argument
By Eric Hughes
June 15, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
For those who didn’t know – myself included, up until a few weeks ago – the show was first performed at Kingston Mines Theatre in Chicago some 40 years ago in the spring of 1971. No more than 10 months later, Grease debuted Off-Broadway at the Eden, and then by June ’72 it had moved to Broadway – where it would reside for a lengthy eight-year run.
In 1978, Paramount Pictures’ Grease lit up the box office across the globe, earning $181 million domestically; close to $400 million worldwide. Discounting ticket inflation, Grease is the highest grossing movie musical of all time.
Why does this matter? Well, the version I saw at American Theater Co.’s sold out, some 120-seat stage was greatly different than the Grease we know and, hopefully, love. That’s because ATC’s production, which celebrates Grease’s 40-year anniversary by returning to the fine city in which it began, is lifted almost directly from the show that premiered at Kingston Mines. It’s a far cry from the polished version that moved to New York the following year.
The Original Grease, as ATC calls it, is a vulgar, sexualized, certainly R-rated Grease. It’s also peppered silly with references to the Windy City, which were scrubbed away completely for the benefit of New Yorkers, who probably wouldn’t have understood – or cared for – such specific Midwestern place setting. Many songs were cleaned up, altered or, in the case of the musical’s titular number, “Grease,” removed altogether! I mean, who would have thought that the show at one time included a second act tune called, well, “Grease”?
It was, at the same time, a cocktail of unusual musical history mixed with what might result from the process of adaptation. Even the duller parts of The Original Grease – of which there were few -- seemed exciting because it still shed light on a show I thought I already knew.
The point of the matter is this: I think there’s an audience for this thing. And I don’t think the idea applies to solely Chicago.
We may as well start there, though, because of the limited data. Almost every performance – if not every performance – has been a sell out since the show’s debut on April 21st. As well, The Original Grease, conceived to be over by now, was extended through late August because of strong ticket sales and word-of-mouth. I’ve yet to come across a published review with less than kind words for the new but old show.
Chicago is full of millions of people, and yet a cute, intimate theater in the city’s North Center neighborhood brandishes one of the hottest tickets in town.
Grease “in the raw” reminds me of one of Hollywood’s popular fads, which is to peel back franchises to their coarser origins. We’ve seen it largely in comic book adaptations with, maybe, Batman Begins leading the charge. That begat movies like this summer’s X-Men: First Class, or 2012’s Spider-Man reboot. Even horror entered the fray with Rob Zombie’s gritty Halloween in 2007, or Friday the 13th two years later. I wouldn’t discount 28 Days Later, either, which injected serious art into a genre that, for me, seemed thrown away.
What we’re seeing, then, are more productions based on the roots of stories rather than polished generic. Why couldn’t this also apply to a musical? And what better musical than Grease, which has a built-in audience of tens of millions of people – most of whom probably didn’t even know Grease could be so exciting without John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John?