It’s the one that you want: Grease is back in Cork
THE musical Grease returns to Cork Opera House for a two-week run on Thursday (April 3). All the old staples are there: the 1950s quiffs, the leather jackets, the T-Birds, the used car, Grease Lightning, the Pink Ladies and a songbook familiar to everyone between the ages of 15 and 55.
“I think everyone knows the songs from Grease,” says George McMahon. “You can’t go to a 21st, or a wedding, without the Grease megamix coming on and everyone singing from the top of their lungs. It’s why it’s such a popular hit when people put it on.”
McMahon plays one of the T-Birds, the joker, Roger, who likes to moon, among other pranks, in this Bryan Flynn-directed revival. “I’m not tall enough, or handsome enough, to play Danny,” he says.
John Travolta made the role of Danny Zuko famous in the 1978 film version. Other actors who have played the bad boy, in the musical, are Richard Gere, Patrick Swayze and David Hasselhoff. Gere understudied the key roles from the original Chicago musical, in 1971, which first hit Broadway in 1972.
Grease is set in a fictitious 1950s high school, Rydell High, which is modelled on William Howard Taft School in Chicago, alma mater to Jim Jacobs, one of the co-writers of Grease, and the guitarist Terry Kath, one of the founders of the band, Chicago.
The musical is about working-class subcultures, and two rival gangs: the T-Birds, known as the Palace Burger Boys in the original musical, and the Flaming Dukes, and their cheerleading girlfriends in the Pink Ladies, who take ‘good girl’ Sandy Dumbrowski under their wing when she swings through their school gates. The lightweight musical tackles weighty subjects like teenage pregnancy and gang violence. It doesn’t, however, always address them in the most considerate way.
“It’s quite a dated message,” says McMahon. “It plays on teenage angst and peer pressure, the issues that kids still have today, but in Grease you’re talking 1950s America, where people need to change themselves to become cool and popular, which is not exactly the message we’d be trying to spread nowadays.”
McMahon’s favourite number from the show is ‘Those Magic Changes’. He likes the harmonies in the song.
Of Grease’s other well-known songs, which include ‘Summer Nights’ and ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’, it’s perhaps interesting to note that ‘You’re the One That I Want’ was not in the original musical. It was one of four commissioned songs for the 1978 film.
All the singing and dancing in the show make for a pretty gruelling workout for McMahon and his fellow cast members. “It does take its toll on you, physically. Once the curtain goes up, it hits sixth gear. Your bones are aching by the end of the week, by the time you’ve done eight shows. When you’re on, the adrenaline really drags you through,” he says.
McMahon was a child star in the title role of Jamie Custer, in the BAFTA-winning, Custer’s Last Stand-Up. He worked on the show for two 13-part series, most of which was shot during summer holidays in Bray, Co Wicklow, when he was still in secondary school. The production company had a tutor to fill in the gaps in his school curriculum, and he remembers his mother dropping up his Junior Cert results while he was on set for the second season.
“My parents were very supportive,” McMahon says. “They knew that acting was something I had a passion for, although it wasn’t until I got the Fair City gig that my dad turned around and said, ‘yeah, you’ve made it son’, because he was a big Fair City fan. He used to make us all sit around and watch Fair City when I was a kid, at a time when it wouldn’t have been top of my priorities.” McMahon has been intermittent on Fair City for a dozen years, drifting into the action to unsettle things with his roguish charm, as the character Ray ‘Mondo’ O’Connell.
“It was quite daunting — my first day on set at Fair City,” McMahon says.
“I was doing a read-through, and sitting there with 30 other actors, and they’re all recognisable from the telly, but I was 18, and when you’re younger, you have less fear about things. You just get on with it.”
Shortly before joining the Fair City crew, McMahon landed a part in the Roddy Doyle-scripted film, When Brendan Met Trudy. It was useful playing alongside Peter McDonald, who played the fey schoolteacher, Brendan.
“I had a scene with him, and he’s one of my favourite actors, and I was doing one of the lines and he kind of pulled me aside, and said, ‘do you realise that you’re on a big close-up?’ He meant that on a cinema screen, if your head moves a tiny bit — what you think is a tiny bit — on the big screen, a tiny movement is huge.
“His message was ‘less is more’, and he got me thinking about lens sizes and shot sizes. It was one of the first good tips that I was given by an actor,” McMahon says.
One role he will not be reprising, he says, is another reality TV show. He won €50,000, to donate to charity, as the last man standing on the RTÉ vehicle, Celebrity Farm, in 2003. Contestants who were “turfed out” included Kevin Sharkey, Twink and the singer Mary Coughlan. “I was 18 years old at the time. It was one week out of my life, a week’s holidays. Great craic, but I would never do it again.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
