In 2016, a devastating fire ravaged Parisâ� ThĂ©Ă tre Mogador.
The 2016 fire occurred a week before a production of The Phantom of the Opera was scheduled to open, and the production had to be canceled. âIt was a disaster,â� says Laurent Bentata director general of Stage Entertainment France, which owns and operates the ThĂ©Ăątre Mogador. The fire âdestroyed the stage and backstage, the set was destroyed by water and the all the seats and carpet by the dust and the smoke. Everything has been changedânew carpet, new seats, even a new foyer.â�
âFor the reopening of our theatre we wanted to have a very happy musical, a feel-good musical. So we did our research, and Grease won,â� says Bentata. â� I think Grease is universal. It speaks to all generations. And itâs iconic.â�
The classic 1,600-seat showplace lies in the heart of Paris and dates from 1919. In recent times, it has specialized in presenting French versions of successful American musicals. For Grease, the 1,000-square-meter (more than 10,700-square-foot) foyer, or lobby, has been completely redoneâand it has been designed as a 1950s diner. âItâs a surprise for the audience,â� Bentata says. âWe customized it for this show. We want people to feel that they are inside the show once they get inside the theatre. All the male ushers will be wearing leather jackets and the women ushers will be wearing long pink dresses. We want to provide the full experience, not just the show.â�
Inside the auditorium, the first row of orchestra seats have been designated âlover seatsââcovered all in pink (as opposed to all the rest in the red), with heart-shaped backs. Each has room for two audience members sitting close together. There are two balconies, but because of the theatreâs layout neither is very far from the stage.
But this wonât be just another mounting of the 1971 Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey muiscal or the movie it inspired starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Mogadorâs Grease is performed (mostly) in French, with some songs in English. For the first time at Mogador, English surtitles are projected high up on either side of the stage, with seating locations for optimum viewing of the titles.
âWeâre very proud to reopen the theatre with our first new creation,â� Bentata says. âWe usually take a production from Broadway or the West End, but this is a new production. Itâs a French version.â� Thereâs new choreography, he says, new direction, â�200 new costumes,â� a new set and a new cast. âA French cast, of course.â�
This version, he says, âis very French. Itâs the way the characters are played. When we produced Beauty and the Beast with a Disney team here we tried to make it very French as well. There was Jean Cocteauâs [1946] Beauty and the Beast movie, [with a dark tone] so we tried to do it more dark and to draw all the characters more precisely. For Grease, we tried not to emphasize the two main characters as much. You have eight or nine characters. For example, Miss Lynch, the English teacher, is very French, in the tradition of French boulevard comedies.â�
The production has a cast of 28 and eight onstage musicians, who are in costume and part of the show. And the changes in this rendition all aim towards introducing the property to a hyrbrid audience. Grease is âmore associated with the movie than the show,â� he says. âMany people donât know it was a show before it was a movie. Weâre trying to remind people it was first a show.â�
Among the songs performed in English is âYouâre the One That I Want,â� one of the four songs not in the original musical that were added for the movie and later incorporated into the stage version. âPart of âWe Go Togetherâ� is also in English,â� Bentata says. âSongs that tell the story need to be in French. âSummer Nightsâ� is in French but the refrain is in English. People need to hear the words they know in English, but the story stays in French. Contrary to the idea that the French are very chauvinistic and they want to have everything in French, they are very keen to keep in English the songs they know in English. Some of the songs are iconic.â�
The advisor for the surtitles is an organization called Theatre in Paris, which, since 2014, has opened up opportunities for English speakers to enjoy the Paris stage by providing surtitles for selected plays and musicals. Theatre in Paris provides tickets for optimum seats to view the titles, and sends someone to greet theatregoers and offer English-language programs. This fall, in addition to Grease, Theatre in Paris also arranges experiences for Cyrano de Bergerac, MoliĂšreâs The Miser, a comedy called Real Life, and I Love Piaf, a musical biography of the legendary French singer.
âParis is the largest theatre venue in the world that is not English-speaking,â� says Carl de Poncins, a co-founder of Theatre in Paris. He and his colleagues work with theatres to âlet non-locals be locals for a night.â�
De Poncins says Stage Entertainment France wants to increase its percentage of foreign patrons at Mogador from 2.5 percentâlargely French speakers from Belgium and Switzerlandâto 10 percent by attracting Anglophones. Bentata says Grease is an ideal vehicle for doing so, in part because as much as the world has changed since the musicalâs 1959 setting, some things remain the same.
âThe problems of teenagers are the same, even if the context is totally different because we have technology and the internet,â� he says. âLove stories, the relations between human beings, are the same in 2017âthe same problems, the same joy. Grease is the story of first timesâfirst cigarette, first love, first car, first fight. It hasnât changed.â�
With the newly reconstructed theatre and the English surtitle experience, youâd think Bentata had enough of change. But heâs still pushing boundaries: He is also trying, and hoping, for something else, he says. âWe are trying to invite American producers and maybe move to Broadway. Itâs a dream we have.â�
