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Grease is the word at Glendale

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Grease is the word at Glendale this week.

Since January, Glendale High School students from all grades have been preparing the well-known musical, written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The story follows 1950s-era students of Rydell High as they make their way through their senior year. Complications arise when Sandy Dumbrowski (played by Haley McLean and Allyson Buchanan) transfers to Rydell and finds that her love interest, Danny Zuko (Liam Spencer), is not the same, gentle person she thought he was when they had met during the summer.

Sandy joins “The Pink Ladies”, a girl group lead by Betty Rizzo (Vicky Steer) and attempts to fit in and gain acceptance among her peers.

Kira Slattery, Kaitlyn Vermeeren, Emma Dans and Katie McCoy play the other “Pink Ladies” opposite “Greasers”: Tyler Gubesch, Brendan Lowrie-Dennis, Jared Haley and Will Carson.

This musical first opened on Broadway in June, 1972 and ran until 1980. It preceded the popular film version staring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, which was released in 1978. There are several noticeable differences between the play and the film, such as added songs like “Those Magic Changes” and “Rock ‘N’ Roll Party Queen”, and different scenes and characters. While the overall plotline is the same, these differences put an interesting spin on the familiar story.

For this production, many beautiful costumes were rented from The Stratford Festival and Theatre Tillsonburg. Professional microphones and equipment enhance the sound quality of the show, and the live band accompaniment brings the songs to life. With the recognizable songs “Summer Nights”, “Greased Lightnin’ ”, “Born to Hand-Jive” and “We Go Together”, toes will be tapping and you will want to get up, dance and join the cast on the stage!

Under the direction Susan Lowrie, the drama teacher at Glendale, students have been rehearsing almost daily after school for four months. Her dedication and hard work have made this show possible and a mutually-beneficial exercise through which students have gained valuable acting and life experience.

Performances run from Wednesday, April 30 to Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m. nightly with a matinee performance on Saturday, May 3 at 2 p.m. All performances take place at Glendale High School (37 Glendale Drive). Tickets are available at the door, at Coward’s Pharmacy or on the Glendale website http://www.tvdsb.ca/glendale.cfm and cost $10 for students and $15 for adults.

The cast and crew look forward to taking the community back to the 50s, a time of leather jackets, grease and rock ‘n roll through this popular and highly-entertaining musical.

 

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