Go Greased Lightning!

I started writing my first book of musical theatre analysis essays in 1994, and it was published in 1996. It was just a few years after we had started New Line Theatre.

To my surprise, until I started writing these collections of essays, no one had ever written anything like this about musicals. There were a couple books already that analyzed the music of some Broadway shows, some books with plots and statistics, some books with behind-the-scenes stories, but there was nothing at the time that was a one-stop resource for directors, actors, and fans to really understand individual musicals on a deeper level.

My essays are about music, lyrics, dialogue, plot, structure and form, characters, relationships, subtext, themes, historical context (when it was written and when it's set), the intersection of the show with the rest of our culture and with musical theatre history, and lots more.

As far I know, I was the first person to study and write about musicals in this way. There had been some excellent books that analyzed non-musical plays in that deep-dive way, but nothing for musicals.

And now here I am, more than twenty-five years later, half scholar, half fanboy. Luckily for me, people seem to really love my books.

My ninth book like this has just been released, Go Greased Lightning! The Amazing Authenticity of Grease. This is only the second time I wrote a whole book about one show; the other was Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of Hair. But both these shows deserved that treatment. Both are rich, complex, and misunderstood works of experimental theatre, from an incredibly fertile period for the art form. If you laughed when you read that last sentence, you're one of the people I wrote this book for.

Here are some snippets from my book's introduction, that explain why I decided to write it.

There are three reasons I wrote this book. The first is that I think many people -- most people? -- underestimate the intelligence and authenticity of Grease and its score, and they completely misunderstand what happens at the end of Grease. Admittedly, that’s partly because the movie dialed back the edgier aspects of the story, and inserted a new finale that made the ending less clear. But the film didn’t change the ending of the story.

For the record, Sandy does not “become a slut” to win Danny at the end of Grease. The exact opposite is true. She rejects the cultural oppression of the 1950s and her parents, and for the first time, claims her own body, her curves, and her sexuality. Though it might not be obvious, Sandy is the protagonist of Grease, and the story ends not with her submission, but with her newfound freedom and self-possession, with strength.

The second reason for this book is that Grease is about the Others, those that don’t conform to mainstream ideas of how we’re supposed to live, act, look. Here now, early in the twenty-first century, America is changing – drastically and fast – and that change is terrifying to some people, especially change this big. And as Yoda taught us, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. As in our past, those today who are fearful are in search of Others to blame. As I write this in mid-2022, America has lost its collective mind, much as we did in the 1960s. And it makes Grease unusually relevant all over again.

The third reason for the book is simply that I love Grease, and I want to share it. I’ve seen the movie more than a hundred times over the years. I saw the film five times at the theatre when it was first released in 1978. I was fourteen. I played the double-LP soundtrack so much I wore it out and had to buy a second copy.

Grease was one of four rock musicals that changed my life. The other three were a high school production of Godspell, The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight screenings at the Varsity Theatre, and later, a traveling student production of Hair up at college. And all within just a few years of each other. In each case I thought to myself, musicals can be THIS? Everything I thought I knew about musicals was suddenly up for grabs, in the most wonderful way. 

I was in teenage musical theatre geek heaven.

Soon after that, I did the original Grease stage show. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was asked to both music direct (for the first time!) and to play Vince Fontaine (I still know some of his monologues). And from the moment I heard that rough, rowdy, wild, original Broadway cast album, I knew that this was the real Grease, not the movie, as much as I loved it. Since then I’ve directed the show two more times, once with a community theatre group and once with my company New Line Theatre in St. Louis.

Grease is the very insightful story of America’s tumultuous crossing over from the 1950s to the 1960s, throwing over repression and tradition for freedom and adventure and a generous helping of cultural chaos, a time when the styles and culture of the disengaged and disenfranchised became overpowering symbols of teenage power and autonomy. Originally a rowdy, rebellious, vulgar, and insightful piece of alternative theatre, Grease was inspired by the rule-busting success of Hair, rejecting the happy trappings of other Broadway musicals for a more authentic, more visceral, more radical theatre experience that revealed great cultural truths about America

Just as the characters in Hair and Grease reject conformity and authority, so too do both Hair and Grease as theatre pieces. Like Hair, Grease is an anti-musical, closer to the experimental theatre pieces of New York’s off off Broadway movement in the 60s, and light years from some of the other musicals running on Broadway at the time.

So this is a book about Grease on stage, the raw, very adult rock musical that opened off, then on, Broadway in 1971 and 1972; and only secondarily about the admittedly great but shallower movie version, and the show’s other various mutant offspring. This is a book about the real Grease, in which a brunette-haired Sandy Dumbrowski once said, “Nah, fuck it,” and took Danny’s ring anyway before singing the reprise of “We Go Together.”

Many producers of revivals and tours of the show since then have tried to make this show into a cute, candy-coated teen comedy, but no matter how you dress it up, it will always be a story about teenagers trying to get laid. It’s worth taking a good look at the real thing as it was first created – a vulgar, intentionally unpolished, but culturally insightful, musically authentic, whip-smart time capsule about how rock and roll, cars, and drive-ins changed sex in America in the middle of the last century, written by two guys who were right in the middle of it all.


I've also written eight other books of musical theatre analysis and exploration, including From Assassins to West Side Story, 1996 (covering Assassins, Cabaret, Carousel, Company, Godspell, Gypsy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Into the Woods, Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Misérables, Man of La Mancha, Merrily We Roll Along, My Fair Lady, Pippin, Sweeney Todd, and West Side Story); Deconstructing Harold Hill, 1999 (covering Ragtime, Camelot, Chicago, Passion, The Music Man, March of the Falsettos, Sunday in the Park with George, and The King and I); Rebels with Applause, 2001 (covering Hair, Rent, Oklahoma!, Pal Joey, Anyone Can Whistle, Floyd Collins, Jacques Brel, The Cradle Will Rock, Songs for a New World, and The Ballad of Little Mikey); Let the Sun Shine In, 2003 (covering Hair in greater depth); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals, 2011 (covering The Wild Party, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Show, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, I Love My Wife, Bat Boy, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and High Fidelity); Literally Anything Goes, 2019 (covering The Threepenny Opera, Anything Goes, The Nervous Set, The Fantasticks, Zorbá, Two Gentlemen Of Verona, The Robber Bridegroom, Evita, Return to the Forbidden Planet, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, A New Brain, Reefer Madness, Bukowsical, and Love Kills); Idiots, Heathers, and Squips, 2020 (covering bare, Urinetown, Sweet Smell of Success, Jerry Springer the Opera, Passing Strange, Cry-Baby, Next to Normal, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, American Idiot, Heathers, and Be More Chill); and Hamilton and the New Revolution, 2021 (covering Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, A Strange Loop, Hadestown, The Color Purple, Bonnie & Clyde, Hands on a Hardbody, and The Scottsboro Boys).

AND COMING SOON… my tenth volume of analysis, He Never Did Anything Twice, covering all the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, who was a longtime New Line Theatre donor and an honorary member of the New Line Board until his recent death. The book includes essays on Saturday Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Evening Primrose, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, The Frogs, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Assassins, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion. I'm hoping it will be released before the end of the year. Cross your fingers.

I also recently contributed "Afterword" commentary essays for reprints of the iconic artsy novels 42nd Street, Go Into Your Dance, and La Vie Boheme, the novel RENT is based on.

Back after the pandemic first hit, I found myself trapped in my apartment with my cats Hamilton and Macheath, and so I turned to writing books directly for the fast growing musical theatre fan base around the world. I thought about how my books and my status as fellow fanboy could serve them and help them explore our art form. Plus, it was a good way to keep my sanity and stay somewhat connected to my beloved musical theatre during those dark days.

I first released a short story anthology, Night of the Living Show Tunes: 13 Tales of the Weird. And then for something completely different, I followed that up with the new songbook, Broadway Musical Christmas Carols; and soon after, The ABC's of Broadway Musicals: A Civilian's Guide, a fun, short, easy-to-read introduction to the art form.

I've also written Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre; and It's a Musical!: 400 Questions to Ponder, Discuss, and Fight About. And in collaboration with actor and illustrator Zachary Allen Farmer, I wrote a short book in the style of Dr. Seuss, about a high school girl and her first musical, called Shellie Shelby Shares the Spotlight; and we followed that up with the whimsical Theatre Cats.

I've always thought of myself as a director first and a writer second, especially since my writing, my books, my blog, etc., grew out of my directing work. But now, both are a big part of my life, and at least for now, I really love it.

The only thing I love more than working on and thinking about musicals, is sharing this crazy magic with people who haven't yet experienced it. I hope this growing musical theatre fan base around the world, the artists who'll be making the musicals in a generation or so, find books like these useful, to inform, to entertain, to share, as they continue on their artistic journeys beyond anything we've seen so far.

I'm just trying to do my small part, to pass on all I've learned and discovered about musical theatre. We all build on what's come before.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott