Review: GREASE at TTIP Indoors

The new Black Box Theater at the new Johnson County Arts and Culture Center opened to the world with an extremely credible production of 1971's "Grease" from Johnson County's Theatre in the Park indoors. Director Tim Bair has designed an entertaining and innovative scheme to make this big musical work in a relatively small space. The show is notable for its exceptional dance sequences and very even performances by a well-matched cast.

Travel back in time to Rydell High School in 1959 and experience the senior year for all the typical suspects experiencing the teenage angst you remember from your own high school experience. Appropriately, nerdy Eugene (Cameron Mabie), the class President, is there along with the demonstrably nasty pretty girl, cheerleader Patty (Natalie Crane) and prototypical principAl Lynch (Lyndsey Day).

The main action concerns the relationships between the two mildest high school gangs that ever lived, The Pink Ladies and The T-Birds. Danny Zuko (Zane Champie) has met new transfer student, blond pretty, sweet Sandy Dumbrowski (Genevieve Austin) at the beach. Danny is the leader of the T-Birds and the coolest of the cool in an Ed "Kookie" Byrnes kind of way. (For those of you too young to remember Ed Byrnes, he was the original Fonzie - the car parker on the 1958 TV mystery series "77 Sunset Strip.") Sandy is sweetly befuddled in a Sandra Dee kind of way. (For those of you too young to remember Sandra Dee, she was the original "Gidget" before Sally Fields was Sally Fields.)

Around his buddies, Danny is the coolest of the cool. Around Sandy, he is just nice Danny. Danny's best friends are Kenickie (Spencer Gochis) and his girlfriend Rizzo (Meredith Hollan). They have a contentious, but ultimately close relationship after a close call with an intimate mistake. And these are the major conflicts in the show. Everybody in this production does a very good job. The audience enjoys their work.

"Grease" can best be described as a "bubble-gum musical" musical. It is intended to be slightly autobiographical for the playwright Jim Jacobs (Chicago Taft High School class of '59) and composer WarRen Casey. Serious subplots are buried in the script, but this one is loved just for laughs and nostalgia.

The Black Box Theater is a flexible space currently with a thrust stage and about 300 seats. There are very good lighting and sound facilities, but no fly space or proscenium. It is located in a very nicely remodeled and repurposed museum and performance space on Metcalf Road in the former King Louis Bowling Alley and Ice Rink, Overland Park .

"Grease" continues at the Black Box through June 25. Tickets are available on the TTIP website www.theatreinthepark.org or by telephone at 913.826.3012.

Photos courtesy of TTIP and Bob Compton Photography

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