BEAR GREASE
When: Saturday, Oct. 28, 7 p.m.
Where: Farquhar Auditorium, University of Victoria
Tickets: Pay What You Can from tickets.uvic.ca
Bear Grease has taken a genre-defining — not to mention much beloved — 1978 movie musical and given it a radical reinvention. The results?
Impressive, according to reviews.
That wasn’t a given, by any stretch. Grease has acclaim and sales statistics unlike few films of its era. Not only was it the highest-grossing musical upon release, its soundtrack was the second-best-selling album of 1978. Hopelessly Devoted to You, the duet between Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, was nominated for an Academy Award and the film has since been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
So, big shoes to fill.
It has gone swimmingly, by all accounts. The local debut of Bear Grease, set for Saturday at the Farquhar Auditorium, is expected to be sold-out prior to showtime.
The 2021 production comes from real-life Edmonton couple Crystle Lightning and Cloud Andrade, members of Alberta’s Enoch Cree Nation. The pair have extensive résumés in music, theatre, television and movies — including a recording career as the rap duo, LightningCloud — and wrote the revamped version as a way of raising the profile of Indigenous culture in Canada.
The key to wider success was tricky, in that they wanted to make it more representative of their culture as a whole, while keeping the core of the story intact. “We don’t want to just be for Native audiences,” Lightning said, during an interview with CBC News.
“We want it to be for everybody. We want to share it with everybody. We want people to get our humour.”
Working in their favour was the storybook love story between central characters Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson, who fall in and out of love. Lightning (who plays Sandy) and Andrade (Danny) are joined by an all-Indigenous cast of characters, some of whom offer sly twists on ones made famous in the film. Tammy Rae plays Rezzo, monikered after Stockard Channing’s Betty Rizzo, while Rodney McLeod plays Canuckie, an interpolation of Jeff Conaway’s character, Kenickie.
Hip-hop also plays a big role, whereas pop and rock and roll were cornerstones of the big screen hit. The costumes are largely faithful to the 1950s poodle skirts and leather jackets worn by Newton-John and Travolta, though alterations have been made.
Care was taken, with respect to the original. But it was important for Ligthning and Adrade to offer a sober take on Indigenous culture and identity. “The reality is, the 1960s weren’t the best time for natives,” Andrade said, during an interview with the Calgary Herald.
“It wasn’t the best thing for First Nations People, what with the residential schools and all this stuff. I usually say we didn’t have the freedom to dance around the streets and hallways like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. This is almost like a chance to re-imagine that.”
Representation in theatre productions is growing in Canada. But Andrade still remembers what it was like when the couple was living in Los Angeles, where Lightning’s family had moved when she was young.
“In L.A., the Indigenous community is small,” he said. “Everybody knows each other. Everybody leaves their res and their community to go make it big in L.A. Everybody is from out of town so nobody has family around the holidays. Crystle’s family was one of those awesome families that takes everyone in during the holidays and makes big dinners and big feasts.”
The couple moved back to Edmonton 2020, and hopes to create a more welcoming atmosphere for Indigenous artists in the country. It has been suggested that re-imagined versions of West Side Story (as Rez Side Story) and Hairspray (Bear Spray) are on the way.
“This is something that has been missing,” he said. “No one else was going to do it for us so we did it ourselves. We want to stick with this theme of ’50s, ’60s doo-wop, Motown vibe that our play has. We really did just create our own lane.”
