Last weekend, Arts West, located at 132 W. State St., was filled with ponytails, leather jackets and hair gel, which could only mean one thing: Rydell High had been transported to Athens.
The Lost Flamingo Theatre Company, Ohio University’s original student-run theatre company, performed its version of the musical “Grease” Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Sold out for both performances, the building was buzzing with excitement Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. The audience included OU students, Athens locals and a great deal of mothers for Moms Weekend.
Ollie Rood, a junior studying English, was the show's director and music director. Although Rood has served as an assistant director in the past, “Grease” was Rood’s first time leading a show to this degree.
Rood said the experience working on the show has been very enjoyable, expressing that the cast and crew made rehearsals fun.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better cast,” Rood said.
Rood said their favorite part about their role as director was seeing their vision come to life.
“It’s the feeling of getting to see your ideas,” Rood said. “Seeing everyone in my cast do everything that I pictured and improving on that more is just the most satisfactory thing I could ever see.”
Although beloved by many, there are some themes and narratives in the musical that could be interpreted as outdated or even problematic. To put a more modern spin on this, Rood said the casting crew did not subscribe to binary restrictions during auditions.
“I went into it casting gender blind,” Rood said. “I don’t subscribe to that. I personally believe anyone can sing anything if they work hard enough at it.”
Instead of solely casting in a binary manner, the show had “femme ensemble” and “masc ensemble” and gender-bent some of the principal roles. Rood said they felt like this aided the narrative the entire cast was trying to tell.
“It makes it more to the tone of this day,” Rood said. “‘Grease’ has a lot of queer undertones, which I love. It’s just really nice to bring more forward by mixing up the boundaries and playing around with things.”
In a similar vein, Rood said there were a couple of details in the show that were tweaked to be more sensitive. However, Rood said the mascs were instructed to remain as “douchey as possible” to remain true to the original storyline.
“That’s the fun part of ‘Grease’ – you get to make a fool of yourself,” Rood said.
Additionally, there were a couple of small plot differences between the 1978 film and the musical. For example, Danny goes to the dance with Rizzo instead of Sandy, and there is no Scarface character for the T-Birds to riff with. On top of that, some songs were included that were left out of the movie such as “Freddy, My Love” and “Those Magic Changes.”
It seemed many of the cast members took that to heart, using a lot of physical comedy to generate laughs and memorable lines. There was even an entire song, “Mooning,” performed by Roger and Jan, about how fun flashing is.
Austin Williamson, a sophomore studying history, played the titular role of Danny Zuko. “Grease” was Williamson’s first show with LFC.
“I’ve tried to embody the 1950s man, which I’m not proud of,” he said, laughing.
LFC’s Sandy is Abbie Ogilbee, a junior studying nursing. Ogilbee has been involved with LFC since she was a freshman and now serves on the executive board.
“Grease” carries some nostalgia for Ogilbee, especially the character of Sandy.
“I was Sandy for Halloween for three years,” she said. “I love ‘Grease.’ It doesn’t have a great message behind it, but it’s a cute show.”
Ogilbee said cheating chemistry between her and Williamson as Sandy and Danny was a little challenging at first, but the pair overcame the difficulties.
“It was definitely a little awkward at first … we’re both also awkward people,” she said. “But he’s super sweet, and we’ve definitely become friends, and it’s really fun working with him.”
Ogilbee said she has loved hearing everyone sing and coming into their characters, especially Larissa Strong who plays Rizzo. In this version of the show, Sandy is on stage with Rizzo as she sings “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.”
“I love being on stage for that and watching her belt,” she said. “That’s probably my favorite part in the show. She definitely steals the space.”
Regarding the show wrapping up, Williamson and Ogilbee both said they were feeling mixed emotions.
“It’s definitely bittersweet,” Williamson said. “It’s definitely really good to perform it, but also that post-show depression is going to hit me like a semi-truck.”
Ogilbee said she hoped the cast’s hardwood and perseverance showed through the performance.
“I hope it’s evident how hard this cast has worked and how devoted everyone was to this process,” she said.
The endings of the shows were met with enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation, a testament to the quality of the performances. Although the story is set in the ‘50s, all generations left the venue singing the iconic songs and gushing over the characters as the halls of Rydell High slowly morphed back to the streets of Athens.
