Grease:Grease is a 1972 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
The musical has its name from the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School (loosely based on William Howard Taft High School (Chicago)), follows ten working-class kids as they navigate the complexities of love, cars, and drive-ins. The score attempts to re-create the sounds of early rock and roll. In its record-breaking original Broadway production, Grease was a raunchy, raw, aggressive, vulgar show which has since been sanitized and tamed down by subsequent productions.[1]
The show tackles such social issues as teenage pregnancy and gang violence; its themes include love, friendship, teenage rebellion, sexual exploration during adolescence and, to some extent, class consciousness/class conflict.
At the time it closed in 1980, Grease's 3,388-performance run was the longest yet in Broadway history, although surpassed by A Chorus Line a few years later. It went on to become a West End hit, a hugely successful film, a popular 1994 Broadway revival, and a staple of regional theater, summer stock, community theater, and high school and middle school drama groups.[2] It remains Broadway's twelfth longest-running show.
