07 Aug Hopelessly devoted to ‘Grease’
High school. You spend your entire childhood thinking about it and the rest of your life looking back on it.
There are dozens of iconic movies about those four formative years. You can trace them through the decades — “American Graffiti,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Breakfast Club,” “Mean Girls,” ”Superbad,” “Booksmart.” The list goes on.
But there are very few musicals about high school, and the one that immediately comes to mind is “Grease.”
Some know it from the 1978 film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Others remember high school productions, community theater performances or the Broadway musical that launched the phenomenon more than 50 years ago.
The iconic nature of “Grease” presents every director of the musical with a challenge: how to reinvent such a classic piece of theater into something fresh and original. That was what director Patrick O’Neill faced as he conceived of Theatre Aspen’s production, which opened Saturday at the Hurst Theatre and runs through Aug. 29.
“Everybody has their own experience with ‘Grease,’” O’Neill said. “Depending on where you fit into that timeline chronologically, everybody has a very different idea about what it is.”
O’Neill has crafted a version of “Grease” that blends the best-loved elements of both the Broadway show and the hit movie while giving the production its own identity.
“The ‘Grease’ Aspen audiences are going to see is the musical everybody knows and loves,” he said. “But it is very specific to Theatre Aspen and to this group of actors and to what we think this audience would respond to. We’re excited and in that way it’s a ‘Grease’ you’ve probably never seen before.”
O’Neill, now 45, remembers high school not as an era of teenage angst but as a time when every possibility still seemed within reach.
“This is a show that reminds us of what that experience was, about being a kid, being a teenager, and loving your friends, and finding your tribe, remembering what those glory days felt like,” he said. “What first love felt like. What the dances felt like.”
Growing up outside Providence, Rhode Island, O’Neill stumbled into musical theater by accident. During a family road trip, he found a cassette tape with a pair of glowing yellow eyes on the cover,
“I thought it was a band,” he said. “I thought it was like Steely Dan or Paul Simon, but this band was called ‘Cats.’”
After wearing out the cassette, a friend’s mother explained that “Cats” wasn’t a rock group at all — it was a Broadway musical. His parents took him to see the touring production not long after this revelation.
“That was kind of the minute the bug was bitten,” O’Neill said. “I didn’t know what Broadway was. I didn’t know what theater was.”
He immersed himself in theater throughout high school and his father encouraged him to pursue it professionally. Having built a successful business after taking his own professional gamble, his father offered advice that still guides O’Neill today.
“The worst thing you can do is wonder,” O’Neill recalled his father saying. “You’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to try.”
O’Neill studied theater and music in Washington, D.C., before moving to New York to become an actor. “I moved to New York, like all actors, to be a star,” he said.
His career path changed when he began volunteering for an organization called Broadway Cares that put on productions to raise money for various causes. O’Neill started working on the other side of the curtain, primarily as a choreographer. By the age of 28, he was working primarily in that field.
He spent a decade serving as associate choreographer alongside Broadway veterans Joann Hunter and Lorin Latarro, helping develop productions including “School of Rock,” “Harmony” and “Ever After.”
O’Neill credits the COVID-19 pandemic with giving him the chance to reinvent himself once again. Instead of waiting for Broadway to reopen, he collaborated with composers in London and New York, wrote three new musicals and developed projects that continue today.
“There really was a renaissance of New York that came out after COVID,” he said. “A lot of people had a lot of things to say and they had time to say it.”
In 2024, O’Neill worked with Theatre Aspen, directing its holiday cabaret at Hotel Jerome. “Grease” is his first production in the director’s chair and he finds himself helming a production with what he says is the strongest team he has ever worked with.
Chris Hanford, fresh from his Broadway debut in “Romeo & Juliet,” stars as the primary male character, Danny. Nevada Riley returns to Theatre Aspen as Sandy after starring as Sophie in last summer’s Theatre Aspen production of “Mamma Mia!”
Kiki Lemieux, who helped originate “The Outsiders” at La Jolla Playhouse, takes on Rizzo, while Broadway veteran Drew Redington plays Kenickie following his run in “Sunset Boulevard.”
Many mentors
O’Neill says one of his favorite aspects of Theatre Aspen is watching seasoned Broadway performers mentor the company’s young apprentice actors who come from universities all over the country.
“You’d think there would be a disconnect,” he said. “But it’s incredible how the mentorship just permeates the room. They take these kids under their wing — not only here at work but going out for coffee and telling them how to find an apartment, how to get an agent. We couldn’t ask for better actors and we couldn’t ask for better people.”
O’Neill is equally excited about the production’s visual design.
“I have a costume designer that is sent to me from the heavens,” he said of Dustin Cross. “And the wig designer is named Jeff Naggs. I’ve worked with them both before, so I trust them with my life, and they’re gonna blow the roof off the place. I don’t think Aspen’s ready for the hair and the clothes that are coming at them for ‘Grease.’”
Yet for all the leather jackets, pompadours and hand jives, O’Neill ultimately hopes audiences leave with something simpler.
“I think more than anything, the time that we’re existing in is so tricky,” he said. “We just need to laugh a little bit.”
And dream. O’Neill hopes audiences can tap into a time when the future was a blank slate.
“If you can take anybody who’s walking on their journey, whether they’re 85, whether they’re 65, whether they’re 45, remembering the fact that there was a time — and there still is a time for all of us — when the possibilities were and are endless. I hope this show helps them tap into those feelings.”