REVIEW — Grief Lightning: A Satire in 78 Slides at RUMPUS theatre
Words by Ngoc Lan Tran
The show’s writer and solo performer Mary Angley personifies a lecturer who desperately tries to prove the popular Grease fan theory.
In an abandoned warehouse known for welcoming identities living on the fringe, a stage is simply set for a lecture held seemingly in secret. A projection screen is readily drawn up, ready to aid the presentation with 78 PowerPoint slides of a clandestine academic project. The lecturer warns that by participating alone, audience members risk being ostracised by mainstream academic circles, as what is being presented goes against all expectations held according to conventions of research practice.
Well this is awkward — I didn’t know I might commit career suicide just by showing up. I am a higher degree research candidate who yet again inadvertently got herself in a pretty dangerous situation, so I guess congratulations to self are due. Yet despite the lecturer’s warning, I know this is a risk I must take. There is something special transpiring. So I say, who cares. To hell with my academic career — take me to a journey that challenges my biases and presumptions, help me reach the pinnacle of truth, let me feel the edge of consciousness! Yes, Grief Lightning, I better shape up ’cause I need to know how and why it-couple Sandy and Danny, two muggle high school students from the 1978 musical movie Grease, can fly into the sky on their lightning-fast car as their friends cheerfully wave them off without thinking: ‘How is that even possible?!’
Musicals are wonderful and weird; all laws are defied including gravity. But perhaps more than any musical, Grease has captured the attention of thousands of redditors for the past decade as they theorise and speculate the movie’s stranger-than-fiction ending. One of the most popular fan theories contends that the entire movie, consisting of playful romantic walks on the beach, singing their hearts out on the bleachers, gracing school dances and drive-in dates, throwing slumber parties and driving fast cars; is all but a coma fantasy of a drowning Sandy whose young life holds on to an adolescence that has yet begun. The question is, ‘If Grease is nothing more than a fantasy, is Sandy’s narrative really the best we can hope for?’
Grief Lightning returns to Adelaide after a sold-out debut at the 2021 Adelaide Fringe Festival and a season in Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival, and an online run at Edinburgh Fringe. The title is a clever twist on the musical’s most iconic and memorable number Grease Lightning.
The show’s writer and solo performer Mary Angley personifies a lecturer who desperately tries to prove the popular Grease fan theory. Angley deftly transforms from a neurotic academic to a Shakespearean narrator, deconstructing the movie scene by scene, moving between commentating and criticising to participating in them. She doesn’t just lecture, she acts; her control and repertoire of movements is a dance routine nothing short of awe-inspiring. Her presence is constant as she entrancingly commands the audience. She glides to the front and back of her PowerPoint projection, allowing not only her body but also her shadow to paint the narratives of Grease as according to good girl Sandy and bad boy Danny.
Angley’s captivating performance cannot shine without the design of the creative team under the creative direction of producer Caitlin Ellen Moore. Sound designer Dan Thorpe’s take on Grease’s iconic soundtracks is superb, sketching a twisty if not at times demonic take on Grease that well shatters the lure of the movie’s dream-like fantasy. Mark Oakley’s lighting design and Sim Myers’ tech production are brilliant as they confront the audience with the blinding lights of the hydromatic grease lightning while cleverly underscoring the grace of Angley’s performance. The entire team collectively brings out a performance as slick as Danny Zuko’s fantasy automobile, deserving of all the praise and applause on a successful opening night.
It is easy to tell that the show has been thoughtfully crafted not only for theatre enthusiasts but also hard-core academics; c’est moi. As a researcher in the making, I cheer out in glee for how deftly Grief Lightning is constructed and presented as a sound and well-researched thesis. The purpose and argument are clearly set out, as well as the thesis’ parameters; a theoretical framework intricately deconstructs Grease through the lens of gender theory, linguistics and semiotics. Despite the title Grief Lighting, there is certainly no such thing as ‘death by PowerPoint’ in the show since each slide is cleverly set out to illustrate and animate important points. It made me wish I hadn’t condemned my peers and tutors to eternal pain with my boring and overly detailed presentations back in my undergrad years.
The academic accomplishment of the show alone also allows me to reflect on whether it deserves the self-deprecating and self-anointed position of the outcasted academic-theatre love child. I tender an argument that it does not. In the spirit of Angley, as the lecturer who boldly challenged those who dared to find her thesis unconvincing or mocked the reddit scholars for finding meaning in a world of post-truth chaos, I contend my belief that the show should proudly and unabashedly assert its rightful position in academia, instead of using self-deprecation for an easy laugh. I understand from experience that academia can be a downright pretentious and condescending bunch, but that doesn’t mean I don’t already have in mind some scholarly circles who would warmly welcome Grief Lightning with open arms.
Just as academic conventions can elevate Grief Lightning, it also requires them to navigate the tricky balance with what is contended as the ‘truth’. The truth is an important concept for Grief Lightning as it is the necessary means to break down the dreamy facade of its subject. For me, however, ‘truth’ is a tricky concept as it is entirely overrated if merely a product of social construct. The ‘truth’ alone cannot be used for its power and prestige to outweigh the significance of the troubles of everyday life, especially the harrowing experiences of being women. Yet, at some points in the show, certain women’s issues felt like they were left as an afterthought. Consent and sexual assault are themes present in Grease, and although they are carefully approached with a personal sensitivity in Grief Lightning, they are also deftly cast aside to make room for the next point. The show ends with an epilogue, where the audience is advised not to grieve for Sandy: Sandy is dead, Sandy doesn’t care; her sexual assault in the coma fantasy theory could have been much worse if had it transpired in real life. Does that mean Sandy wouldn’t care about her sexual assault because it wasn’t real? Indeed, reality can be a convincing basis for this point, but it also ensues a fallacy that wrongly negates the significance of the assault, its consequences, and how it affects Sandy. Even if Sandy’s assault is not real, what remains is the representation of it in the media which means we cannot just sit back and turn a blind eye. A more critical discussion would perhaps go: Shouldn’t it be the case that despite whatever ontological realm Sandy was in, may it be life or death of the comatose in-between, her assault is treated with the same seriousness? That consent is consent is consent? These suppositions are loaded, I admit, but what matters is that Grief Lightning may have taken on a heftier responsibility to deal with the precarious intersection of social issues and ontological modes than it imagines.
I had come in to see Grief Lightning, a skeptic. Personally, I’m not one for fan theories. I remember seeing Grease for the first time: I was about 12 years old, wide-eyed, a believer in musicals, romance and particularly rom-coms. Years and years later, it’s not hard for me to recall the images of the iconic duo of leather-clad slick-haired Danny Zuko and blond-haired girl next door Sandy Olsson, played by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Like many fans I had believed Danny and Sandy are meant to be together, that they are more iconic than peanut butter and jelly because they are a bad-boy-good-girl turned good-boy-bad-girl kind of couple. And like many others, my belief is disrupted, because as much as I love Grease, I know something about it isn’t right. Whether Grease was a coma fantasy or not, I know that the canon needs to be challenged. Grief Lightning does just that. The show allows me to abandon Grease’s interpretation of romance in a wild, weird, and wickedly fun way without tainting the magic of musicals. I’m still a romantic at heart, but now I have more freedom to explore what romance means for me because of it.
