With a rustle of poodle-skirts, oodles of glamour and some good ol’ fashioned Summer Love, Karachi’s Arts Council is just about to be hit by some Greased Lightning. It’s the unforgettable high-school romance of the 50s, epitomised by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, with the rambunctious T-Birds and the feisty Pink Ladies wielding on-stage magic, prom nights, slumber parties, and cheerleaders jiving to a brilliant, iconic soundtrack. Grease has been a Broadway hit for the longest time and chances are it’s going to be pretty phenomenal here in Pakistan.
Nida Butt of Made For Stage Productions’ earlier mainstream Broadway re-enactments, Mamma Mia and Chicago, come to mind. They were high on the razzmatazz and Grease promises to be the same, if not better.
There’s a lot of talent at play here: there’s Nida, of course, with her penchant for presenting well-honed, seamless musicals, an orchestra rendering the classic soundtrack live, overseen by Nida’s husband, music director and Coven lead man Hamza Jafri, an ensemble cast of veterans and interesting newcomers including Ayesha Omar, Sanam Saeed and Ahmed Ali, female costumes designed by FnkAsia, styling by the make-up team at Nabila’s N-Pro, and some very grandiose sets.
The massive sets
The original Broadway script for Grease features eight sets and Nida has managed to set up five of them for Pakistan. From the burger joint to high school, the girls’ pyjama party and park, vintage America will be hitting the Arts Council stage, and creating them has virtually been a feat of engineering.
“We wanted the sets to reflect the spirit of Grease, but there were so many technicalities to deal with,” says Nida. “The multiple sets needed to be moved efficiently, within 20 second spans as the play moved from one scene to the other. However, the wings of the Arts Council are half the size of the stage, which meant that there would be no place to store the multiple sets between scenes. Once I’d figured out the mechanism we’d use, Mustafa Rizvi joined me to deal with the other complexities and Pomme Gohar stepped in as art director. Right now, we have a team of 15 boys dedicated solely to changing sets and props. It has to be done quickly, in near darkness, but they have pretty much nailed it now.”
Yet another coup was re-creating the infamous Greased Lightning car that eventually takes the leading couple off into the sunset in the inevitable happy ending. “We considered remodelling an old Chevy, but we couldn’t possibly have fit it through the five-feet-wide Arts Council entrance. Instead, we decided to create a showpiece 1964 Ford Convertible from scratch, outsourcing the work to Kinetic Company,” says Mustafa.
Rocking the retro style
The female characters’ wardrobe has been designed by FnkAsia’s Huma Adnan. “My daughter, Parishae Adnan, is part of the cast and I started off with designing just her outfits,” she says. “However, it just turned out to be such fun, and Nida and the rest of the crew loved the clothes. I ended up designing clothes for all the 17 girls in the play.” There are three to four outfits for each character, and they vary from cheerleader uniforms and prom dresses to preppy schoolgirl clothes and nightgowns. I’ve used silk taffeta, cancans, net and georgettes to recreate the 50s look. We had to make sure that the clothes looked authentic, while also befitting a Pakistani stage. We’ve even created some head-gear: silver rollers attached to shower caps to emulate a dream sequence!”
The boys’ clothing, meanwhile, has been selected by Merium Azmi. “The boys are primarily wearing basic jeans and tees, but we’ve had their jackets embellished at the back with T-Birds,” says Nida.
And for the final, defining touches, Nida has the make-up wizards from Nabila’s N-Pro at her disposal. “If I had my way, we would only be doing theatre,” laughs Nabila. “Taking on Grease is going to be demanding, considering that the play is going to run for three weeks. But it’s something that we enjoy and it’s our way of promoting the new wave of artistes that are going to be taking Pakistan forward.” Stylist Sara Shah at N-Pro has overseen the looks for the characters. For the boys, it’s all about dramatic sideburns and gelled quiffs a la Travolta and Elvis Presley, and for the girls, classic pin-up hairstyles reminiscent of the 50s. “We’ve also helped out with wigs and touches to the wardrobe as much as we could,” says Nabila.
It’s an amalgamation of talent, experience, hardwork and extenuatingly long practice sessions. An English play in Pakistan, of course, can’t draw in the crowds as one in Urdu would. However, as Broadway re-enactments go, Grease looks like fun, pure and simple. The original copyrighted script is being used, which means that there are more songs in this production than in the movie.
It’ll be interesting to see if Made For Stage’s Grease manages to do justice to the classic Broadway script. It’s a step up for local musicals and our hopes are high — let the Greased Lightning strike Pakistani theatrics and propel it further!
Published in The Express Tribune, January 16th, 2014.
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