Grease’s retro trip starts with its energized songs, to May 17 at the Granville Island Stage
CTORA Productions’ new version of the hit musical brings back nostalgic numbers like “Summer Nights”
CTORA Productions’ Grease. Photo by Canna Zhou
CTORA Productions presents Grease at the Granville Island Stage May 8 to 17
THERE ARE AMPLE reasons 1978’s Grease became the biggest-grossing movie musical of all time. Let’s start with ultra-hot stars Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta as the love story’s central teenyboppers—never mind the fact that they hadn’t darkened the doorstep of a high school in a decade or more. Then consider how ’50s-obsessed the world was, on the heels of big- and small-screen hits like American Graffiti and Happy Days.
But more than anything, you can chalk up its mass appeal to those songs—catchy earworms all, from “You’re the One That I Want” to “Summer Nights” and “Hopelessly Devoted to You” to “Greased Lightnin’”. Let’s be honest: it’s an almost-perfect retro score.
Such indelible tunes are at the nostalgic centre of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s hit 1971 hit stage musical that predated the film. And you’ll find them all in a new live rendition of Grease, staged in all its poodle-skirt-and-bobby-sock-wearing glory by CTORA Productions. It’s directed by Sarah Rodgers and comes complete with a live band conducted by Jeremy Hoffman.
Will bad-boy greaser Danny Zuko (Stephen Thakkar) win over innocent new girl Sandy Dumbrowski (Ava Stark)? Slip on your saddle shoes and head to the Granville Island Stage to find out—and fully expect to be humming the music for days afterward. 
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