Grease is the word Grand Players mount new production of timeless musical

Grease is the word.

It’s got groove, it’s got meaning. Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling.

Or, the way we were feeling.

“I think a lot of people will come to the show and say, ‘Yeah, I remember doing that,'” said Anthony Pizzuto, who plays Kenickie in the Grand Players’ production of “Grease,” which runs through next weekend at the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. “People like reflecting and looking back.”

“Grease” tells the story of Sandy Dumbrowski, a pretty Miss Perfect who has the hots for Danny Zuko, the leather-jacket-wearing, tough-talking leader of the Burger Palace Boys. Danny has the hots for her, too, but he’s too cool to show it. Lucky for Sandy, the sassy Pink Ladies take her under their wing and turn the virginal square into Rydell High’s hottest chick.

“People my age, who weren’t even around back then, can associate themselves with this show because there are the same scenarios that we have today,” said Pizzuto, who’s 22.

Only better. There’s something about “Grease” that makes audiences long for a time that never was. Whether it’s the cool but clueless Pink Ladies, with their booze-and-butts slumber parties, the hormonally charged Burger Palace boys, who tool around town in Kenickie’s beloved Greased Lightning, the slick DJ Vince Fontaine or the nerdy English teacher Miss Lynch, the characters are timeless.

“The basic premise of ‘Grease’ is, we all want to hearken back to a simpler, gentler time than we’re in now,” said director Ken Stack, one of the few people involved with the production who were around in the ’50s. “If we really look back at the ’50s, it was horrendous. The Cold War was cranking up, we had just lost the Korean War. The Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik. … We were balancing our lives between ‘Donna Reed’ and building air-raid shelters. Anything to grab hold of some sort of security.”

And “Grease” fosters that sense of security, even today. The play, written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey in the spring of 1970, is the fifth-longest-running musical in Broadway history. It’s easy to love because it has no message. There’s no subtext. There’s no pretension. It’s about teenagers, falling in love, talking about sex, slicking back their hair and singing rock ‘n’ roll.

“I think it’d speak very much to today’s audience,” said Stack, a self-professed ’60s liberal who said the worries of today aren’t that different from those of the ’50s. “Let’s have a simple, carefree existence for a short period of time and then we’ll go back to reality.”

Neither the Grand Players nor Stack have tackled “Grease” before, but because the play is so widely performed, the director had his doubts.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, God, everybody’s done it,’ but ‘Grease’ was brand new to me,” Stack said before a technical rehearsal last week. “I’ve had a great time with the show. I expected to go in and say, ‘It’s my job,’ but its energy infects the show. Now I can see why it’s so popular.”

And the cast, even in rehearsal, carries that energy onstage. Monykah Dowling of Hampden makes a sweet but feisty Sandy, and in the role of Danny, Andrew Myers of Ellsworth is her handsome and endearing counterpart. Heather Astbury of Blue Hill plays Rizzo with an elegance that can’t be diminished by her tough-girl edge, and Frances Idlebrook of Ellsworth is hilariously ditzy as Frenchy, the beauty-school dropout. But Pizzuto may just steal the show as he dances on the hood of a Chevy Bel Air wagon-converted-to-car, singing “Greased Lighting.”

“Everyone’s a lead,” said Will Stephenson, the stage manager. “It’s a family. It’s just a lot of really good people. You hear of the back-stabbing and me-first kind of stuff, but there’s none of that here.”

Pizzuto agrees.

“There’s a lot of bonding onstage, and backstage, we’re becoming one big friendly bunch.”

In other words, they go together, like ramma-lamma-lamma-ka-dinga-da-dinga-dong.

“Grease”

Where: The Grand Auditorium, Main Street, Ellsworth

When: 7 p.m. Oct. 24, 25, 31, and Nov. 1;

2 p.m. Oct. 26 and Nov. 2

Admission: $8-$18

Information: 667-9500,

(866) 363-9500, or

www.grandonline.org