Grease (musical)

Grease
Original Broadway cast recording
Music	Jim Jacobs Warren Casey
Lyrics	Jim Jacobs Warren Casey John Farrar
Book	Jim Jacobs Warren Casey
Productions	1971 Chicago 1972 Broadway 1973 West End 1979 West End revival 1993 West End revival 1994 Broadway revival 1994 US tour 2001 West End revival 2002 West End revival 2007 West End revival 2007 Broadway revival 2008 US tour 2017 UK tour 2022 West End revival 2023 West End revival

Grease is a musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Named after the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as greasers and set in 1959 at the fictional Rydell High School in Northwest Chicago^[1] (based on Taft High School in Chicago, Illinois,^[2] and named after rock singer Bobby Rydell^[3]), the musical follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of peer pressure, politics, personal core values, and love.^[3]

The score borrows heavily from the sounds of early rock and roll. In its original production in Chicago, Grease was a raunchy, raw, aggressive, vulgar show. Subsequent productions toned down the more risqué content.^[4] The show mentions social issues such as teenage pregnancy, peer pressure, and gang violence; its themes include love, friendship, teenage rebellion, sexual exploration during adolescence. Jacobs described the show's basic plot as a subversion of common tropes of 1950s cinema, since the female lead, who in many 1950s films transformed the alpha male into a more sensitive and sympathetic character, is instead drawn into the man's influence and transforms into his wild, roguish fantasy.^[5]

Since it was first performed on February 5, 1971, at Kingston Mines nightclub in Chicago,^[6] Grease has been successful on both stage and screen, but the content has been diluted and its teenage characters have become less Chicago habitués (the characters' Polish-American backgrounds in particular are ignored with last names often changed, although two Italian-American characters are left identifiably ethnic) and more generic. The first Broadway production opened on June 7, 1972; when it closed in 1980, Grease's 3,388-performance run was the longest yet in Broadway history, although it was surpassed by A Chorus Line on September 29, 1983. It went on to become a West End hit, a successful feature film, two popular Broadway revivals in 1994 and 2007, and a staple of regional theatre, summer stock, community theatre, and high school and middle school drama groups.^[7] It remains Broadway's 17th longest-running show.^[8]

Grease was adapted in 1978 as a feature film, which starred John Travolta (who himself had been in stage productions in a different role) and British-Australian singer and actress Olivia Newton-John, removed the musical's Chicago urban setting, and changed some plot elements, characters, and songs while adding new songs and elaborating on some plot elements only alluded to in the musical. Some of these revisions have been incorporated into revivals of the musical. A 2016 live TV musical used elements from both the original stage version and the film.^[9] A 1982 film sequel, Grease 2, included only a few supporting characters from the film and musical and had no involvement from Jacobs or Casey; Jacobs has gone on record to voice his disapproval of Grease 2.