Who needs traditional “Greased Lightning” when you have “Grease with a Side of Mumbo Sauce?”
The D.C.-based spin on the musical “Grease” hits Lincoln Theatre for three shows on Sept. 8-10.
“I was looking for my next play — and one of my wife’s favorite movies is ‘Grease,'” creator Lovail Long told WTOP.
“I started Googling ‘Grease’ and I didn’t see any representation of us in ‘Grease,’ so I said, ‘This can’t be right.’ I looked at high school plays, I looked at over 300 hours of ‘Grease’ and tried to find representation of us, my eyes were bleeding and my wife said, ‘I can’t take no more.’ It hit me and I said, ‘I have to do a Black version of ‘Grease.'”
Rather than Rydell High School, this version is set at Ballou High School on 4th Street, Southeast in Ward 8. Instead of John Travolta’s Danny Zucko, we get actor Frank “Scooby” Marshall playing the role of Cool Disco Dan.
“Cool Disco Dan is a throwback to the ’80s of D.C.,” Marshall told WTOP.
“Cool Disco Dan was a real figure in D.C. who gained his prominence through street art over the years, so I thought it was cool to put his name in the play. Dan is a senior at Ballou High School who fell in love with a young lady, Candy, in Ocean City. He tried to play big for his boys when he got back to school and now he’s gotta prove his love to get his girl back.”
Actress Tiffanie McCall plays the role of Candy, who stands in for Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy.
“Sandy is a high school senior [on] summer vacation in Ocean City,” McCall told WTOP.
“She met Disco Dan, fell in love like a dream come true, but all of a sudden, plans changed and instead of moving back to North Carolina, she becomes a senior at Ballou High School. Her fairy tale summer love, she’s holding it in her heart wondering if she’ll ever meet him again. … In the end, she feels like in order to get his attention, she kind of has to match his fly.”
Instead of the Pink Ladies, the female clique is the Pink Honies, while the male clique Greasers are the Dom Pérignon Crew. Wrangling them all is Bishop Vance Oldes as the school’s janitor a la Mr. Johnson from “Abbott Elementary.”
“We have an amazing cast,” Oldes told WTOP. “The directors and producers are phenomenal, great people to work with. I think this is an ineffable production that I’m glad to be a part of. As a janitor, I’ve seen a lot, I’ve been in this city for years, trying to see this new senior class panning out with this teenage triangle love, kind of narrating.”
Together, they apply a fresh D.C. beat to all of your favorite songs from the 1972 Broadway show and 1978 movie: “Summer Nights,” “Hopelessly Devoted,” “There Are Worst Things I Could Do” and “You’re the One That I Want.”
“I have the opportunity and the privilege to be the music director for the play as well,” Marshall said.
“We all grew up on ‘Grease,’ so when I saw the songs, the challenge was trying to figure out how to get the songs to sound D.C. and put the go-go spin on it. Lovail came up with how he was going to play them and it was my job to fit them in … D.C. style. Tiffanie is an incredible singer. … We’ve just got a bunch of talent, great dancing and great singing.”
The soundtrack also features homages to 1980s pop and soul music, while the dialogue references popular D.C. lingo from the ’80s instead of the “wop ba-ba lu-mop, wop bam boom” of the 1950s like the original flick.
“We’ve got Janet Jackson, Chuck Brown, Tina Turner, New Edition, EU,” Long said.
“All the lingo makes it: ‘Bumpin’ fresh,’ ‘like dat,’ all the old D.C. lingo,” Marshall said. “That’s what I’m most proud of. It’s us in the play and I can’t wait for the people to experience it. … It’s going to be a great production and I want to see everybody come out if you’re feeling nostalgic and you want to take it back to the ’80s.”
It’s part of the same Black Broadway production company that previously staged “The Giz” at Lincoln Theatre.
“D.C. Black Broadway started by me walking up U Street and not seeing any Black productions on U Street anymore, so I was like, ‘Man, what a perfect place to start at Lincoln Theatre,’ I thought it would be an attraction,” Long said.
“With Broadway, they usually do a lot of adaptations of what’s going on in movies, so I thought it might be a great idea to put some D.C. culture in it and birth something new that everybody else wanted to see.”
Listen to our full conversation here.
