Director: Expect high-energy singing, dancing, some fan favorites, surprises in OCTC production
OCEAN CITY — When audiences see the production of “Grease” at the Hughes Performing Arts Center this week and next, they will see and hear some of their favorite numbers from the popular musical, but may be surprised by a few things.
The Ocean City Theatre Company production is the stage version of the musical, according to director and choreographer Bonnie Kelly. It predated the 1978 movie starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John about the Rydell High Class of 1959.
“The fun part about directing ‘Grease’ is it’s the fun music you grew up on. … It’s music you know, it’s music you love. It’s very much grounded in social dance,” Kelly said. “As much as there’s going to be flips and turns and all that good stuff, it’s also just dance moves you see your aunts, uncles and grandparents whip out at family parties,” she added, laughing. “It’s high-energy.”
Kelly said this isn’t the movie version.
“When I first saw ‘Grease’ on stage I didn’t have that background. When you leave, you think, ‘That’s not like the movie.’ That’s because the script came first; it was written around 1971-72, and they revamped it for the movie in the late 1970s. That’s what everybody knows.”
She said the OCTC was able to get the rights to some of the songs from the movie. “Some were already in here and there are other songs you might not have attached to ‘Grease,’ songs like ‘Magic Changes,’ ‘Freddie My Love’ that are not in the movie so there are some moments where you’re like, ‘Sandra Dee’ happens in a park, but in the movie it’s in the bedroom.’ If you go into it knowing that, it’s fun to see (what they changed) for the movie.”
Blending the two has been “a fun challenge,” Kelly said, to give audiences what they want in the familiar characters because how they are written in the script is not necessarily how they’re portrayed in the movie.
Also a challenge? Being both director and choreographer.
“The hard part is every other number is a song-and-dance number. We’re putting this (show) up in 12 days total from first time meeting to last note of the music in our dress rehearsal,” she explained, noting others are doing double duty with this show and the OCTC children’s theater productions at the Music Pier.
In many productions, there is a director and a choreographer so they can be working in different places at the same times. Knowing she didn’t have that luxury, she started prepping choreography at her Philadelphia home in March.
“I had to … get my formations ready so I could come in and just throw it at them, get the show up, so we could start running continuously in order to feel we are grounded for opening night. I’ve done theater where … your first dress rehearsal is opening night, so we are avoiding that at all costs,” she said, laughing.
Kelly has experience to handle this. The girl who grew up in Cherry Hill and came down to Ocean City for all of the family vacations earned a BFA in musical theater from Montclair State University. She then lived in New York City for eight years, did a national tour of “A Chorus Line,” two and a quarter years of “Beauty and the Beast,” (“I was the silly girl, assistant dance captain and understudied Babette”), works at Ovations Dance Studio in southern New Jersey, is a teaching artist at Walnut Street Theatre and has done some work through the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia as well.
“I started to dabble on both sides of the table, as we call it. I directed ‘Newsies’ here in 2019, right before the pandemic, through OCTC,” Kelly said. “I was on deck to do ‘Sound of Music’ but COVID knocked that out. I’m happy to be back to direct and choreograph ‘Grease.’
“It’s fun to flex my director muscles and choreography muscles, but choreography is second nature because I grew up as a dancer.”
Kelly came in prepared for “Grease” just as she did for “Newsies,” but there are limitations doing all the choreography in her living room by herself.
“Some things work in my head and on paper, but you get it on to people and you’re like, ‘That’s not physically possible, but good try,’” she said, smiling.
There was some special research she and others in the production had to do because they’re putting on a show written about high school in 1959.
“There have been times where there are phrases in the script where we’re like, ‘What does that mean?’ You get all the ‘neats.’ Is that a good thing or a bad thing? They get coupons to Robert Hall and we had to look that up.” (It was a clothing store.)
“There were phrases in the script that I never heard,” she said. “I had no idea what that is. Translating that for people in the show, we have someone who is 19, ‘What’s a neat?’ At some point somebody hands out ‘Vogues’ and I thought it was magazines, but no, it was cigarettes.
“We had to go through the script and do our research because we’re getting further and further away from the ’50s. That’s funny to think about,” Kelly said. “I’m 35; I’m not much older than some of the people in the cast, but there is that age gap. I remember my grandmother telling me about the sock hops for sure. Some of their grandparents are my parents’ age. They weren’t at the sock hops. They were at the discos. It was just different. That’s been funny.”
“Grease” is presented by the Ocean City Pops, Ocean City Theatre Company and the city of Ocean City. It is on stage at the Hughes Performing Arts Center, Sixth Street and Atlantic Avenue, Aug. 6, 7, 9, 13, 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees Aug. 8 and 15. Tickets are $25 to $30 available online at showpass.com/o/city-of-ocean-city.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff