The houses were packed and aroar with ovations this weekend – an auspicious beginning to a 2024-25 theater season that continues its post-pandemic recovery arc to get butts back in seats.
In the past two decades, never have Theatre Memphis and Playhouse on the Square more loudly proclaimed their institutional and artistic differences than when they announced their respective line-ups earlier this year.
Since its massive renovation, Memphis’ East End has been making money hand over fist with splashy, family-friendly musicals. The venue has the technical capacity and budget to do them well. Very well. And even if the titles themselves are a real yawn for someone (like me) who breathes 21st Century air, the theater’s productions unfailingly make theatergoing a joy.
The worst thing to say about T.M.’s season opener “Grease,” currently playing to sold out audiences, is that it is “Grease.”
A staple of high school auditoriums since shortly after its 1972 Broadway debut, the musical and its 1978 film adaptation would kick off Gen X’s fascination with greasers and Pink Ladies. They’ve been lodged in our collective psyche ever since.
Consider the immediate appeal and staying power of the piece. The high school kids it follows – the Class of 1959 – are now in their 80s. The pre-Boomer generation that invented rock ‘n’ roll and rama-lama-ding-dong was just over a decade removed from their teen selves when this musical premiered. Can any 30-something today imagine a similar nostalgia for the year 2010? Such was the cultural shift between 1959 and 1972 [insert Vietnam, Beatles, Woodstock, Dylan, LSD, JFK, LBJ, RFK, MLK…] that this musical, unabashedly concerned with teenage sexual anxieties and awakenings, has become strangely associated with more innocent times.
The current production doesn’t skimp on hormonal excess or what would now be dubbed PG-13 sex talk. Interest in sex hasn’t changed so much in the last 60 years. The biggest difference between then and now is that high schools today don’t have an auto shop where teen boys can build pussy wagons from the ground up. Alas, those good ol’ days are long gone.
Theatre Memphis’ “Grease” is about as good a regional production of this title as one can imagine, slick and immaculately produced. From opening to close, it’s a huge ball of well-channeled energy. While the show is densely populated with lively principal characters, they seem to be part of a bigger swirl of high school life. The ensemble makes this one exceptional show.
Setwise, Jack Netzel-Yates creates a focused central playing area in a school-like courtyard. Its movable staircases and catwalks double as bleachers and balconies. The depth and versatility of the scenery is a visual feast made even more dynamic by director-choreographer Whiney Branan’s clever way of circulating cast members on and off stage as if kids were in endless supply.
I found myself delighted by even the chorusters in the far back, watching their little relationships develop over the course of Senior year. Non-speaking roles are beautifully integrated into the storytelling, and sight gags abound like easter eggs hidden throughout the show.
I laughed hysterically during a pajama party dance number when the girls came bounding onstage, joined by the school nerd, Eugene (Cade Forbes’ physical comedy is fabulous), in his flannel PJs. It’s a perfect joke, and one that also winks to how “diversity” — in its best sense — is baked so organically into this production.
The cast is integrated racially, of course, unlike the actual 1950s. But we also get a sense that human sexuality in all its variety is just as warmly welcomed here despite the show being about young people in the ‘50s struggling with age-old identity questions around manhood and womanhood.
While no character in “Grease” is particularly complex – aside from Arielle Mitchell’s artfully matured Rizzo, whose pregnancy scare is the show’s most “adult” theme – I was consistently impressed by the great comedic acting choices made by cast members.
There is a reason local actors with professional pedigree audition for this community theater. Not only do they get to perform on the region’s most professional-looking scenery, they can show us that even in a lighthearted comedy character development matters.
Nathan McHenry, in his dual roles of deejay Vince Fontaine and the Teen Angel, may be one of the best scene chewers in Memphis. Here, he impishly breaks the fourth wall as a kind of sly nod to the worldly grownups in the audience. Teenagers are, in fact, silly people, as his eye-rolls suggest. His “Beauty School Dropout” crooned to Mac White’s vociferous Frenchy trades Frankie Avalon’s cool seduction in the movie for an arch study in condescension. I ate it up.
Another feature of this production that makes it the best possible version of what “Grease” can be is the addition of hit songs from the movie that are not in the original musical. It’s hard to imagine the show now without them. Nothing quite hits the nostalgic feels – for all generations – as Rachel Brannen’s forlorn Sandy belting “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”
I could rave on about the technical and musical excellence of this production, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the flipside of so much good craft dedicated to so much of a hoary title. Unlike last season’s “Beautiful: The Carol King Musical,” which rapturous audiences discussed long after the show closed, people whose judgment I value have all repeated the same observation about “Grease.”
It’s great. But it’s “Grease.”
And that is no minor criticism in a community that prides itself on its top-notch artistry. Chicago is the nearest city with Memphis’ level of sheer talent. A truly progressive theater scene needs its theater to make progress.
This brings us to the West End, where Playhouse on the Square is billing itself as the House of the Now. It was a bold, bold decision to build its entire season around newer and/or more serious works, though I am skeptical that box office receipts will prove that audiences are as hungry for shows overtly concerned with themes of race and social justice as they are for pure escapism – especially at a time when politics and local troubles are eating up so much mental energy.
It’s my own contention that POTS – which has neither the budget nor the technical bench to match Theatre Memphis – will need to be laser-focused on acting and direction in the coming months.
I felt that focus was missing in “Waitress,” a show that has the potential for much more dramatic depth than “Grease.” The 2016 Broadway musical by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles is a story about a baker/waitress in a small town diner who finds out that she is pregnant with her good-for-nothing husband’s baby.
How “Grease’s” Rizzo traveled a more complicated psychological journey in a single song than Lynden Lewis’s Jenna did through the entirely of “Waitress” raises perennial questions of direction vs. acting. Lewis certainly has an exceptional voice for the show’s modern score, intricately tied to character development.
Like “Grease,” there are plenty of big characters in “Waitress” – a straw-chewing cook, a nerdy younger friend, a sassy older friend, an old curmudgeon who offers a kind of Teen Angel perspective on the seething emotions of youth. Experienced actors like Stephen Garrett (as a love-bitten obstetrician) offer glimpses of how smart, intuitive acting choices can otherwise color a production short on scenic color.
I think it is perfectly reasonable, as a subscriber and fan, to ask that the company get fussier about about details. This is important to discerning theater lovers who will be equally nitpicky and analytical in the aftermath. Nothing invites harsh comparisons like attending back-to-back shows and seeing obvious differences in quality.
It’s not a competition, I am reminding myself on the eve of the annual Ostrander Awards. And it shouldn’t be. But comparisons are inevitable. And I leave readers with a pair of photos that, to me, represent the challenge ahead for Playhouse with its season aimed at a patronage of astute, serious-minded theatergoers who remember last season’s “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God” and “The Lehman Trilogy” as knock-out professional productions.
To the left, the crisp neon signage that hovers over the stage of “Grease.” To the right, the sign over the diner in “Waitress” that sparked an intermission conversation over what in Rorschach’s name it could possibly be. A looming vulture? A coffee cup with a male appendage? Audiences register these details, whether or not they are distracted by them.
What I see on the left is clarity of intention: Theatre Memphis is aiming to be the Broadway of Memphis. On the right, a more charitable viewer might limn something a bit more Dali-esque. I do appreciate a good artistic statement. But I want it to be by design, not by accident. ✒ C.B.
