- The Fresno Bee
Thursday, Mar. 14, 2013 | 03:06 PM
So it has come to this, the car might have sighed.
Sitting abandoned in a vacant field, the 1949 Chevy Coupe surely had seen better days than this. If it could reminisce, what would those memories be? It might have been companion to a clean-cut family on a lively road trip along Route 66. Or hosted a pair of teenagers necking in the front seat at the drive-in. Perhaps it had even roared through a drag race or two along a deserted country road.
Now it was just a rusted hunk of metal awaiting the final ignominious crush for the landfill.
And then Children's Musical Theaterworks saved the car's life.
Most community theater productions of the musical "Grease" settle for a reasonable facsimile of "Greased Lightning," the souped-up car that inspires one of the fantasy sequences in the beloved musical. Some companies use converted golf carts. Others build the front half of a stage car, headlights always facing the audience.
But Joe Wettstead, the president of CMT's board of directors, wasn't willing to settle for that. He wanted a real car onstage, and he wanted one that would be period authentic. He couldn't find one to rent among his network of theater designers. So he connected with a contact who works for the San Francisco Opera, who found him a car that looked as it had been dumped in some Bay Area field.
Onto a car trailer went the Chevy for the drive to Fresno.
When it arrived, it wasn't much to look at. "God love it, it was a rusted-out heap," Wettstead says.
Facelifts can involve pain, as many of the "Real Life Housewives" could tell you. In the case of the '48 Chevy, the roof came off to make it a convertible. There was lots of scrubbing, painting and stripping of parts to make it light enough to roll onstage.
"I spent a lot of the last two days underneath it," says Bruce Robinson, a CMT scene shop foreman, a few days before today's opening at the Fresno Memorial Auditorium.
Also key to the car's transformation was scene shop foreman Devin Gregory, stagehand Tom Wolfgang and set designer Victoria Robinson.
But the most drastic surgery came before the car even made it into the theater. Because of the size of the back door, the entire car couldn't fit through. So the Chevy was carefully cut in half. Looking at the floorboard of the car, you can see the jagged yellow "cut line."
After the two halves of the car were rolled through the door, they rode up the stage elevator, located in the orchestra pit, up to stage level, where they were bolted together.
The car actually plays two roles in the show, which certainly gives it a split personality. It first makes an appearance as the old, beat-up clunker belonging to Kenicki, one of the T-Birds and Danny Zuko's sidekick in the show. The audience sees the side of the car that has been left close to its original state.
Then, in the "Greased Lightning" number, the car is turned around and rolled out to reveal a candy-apple-red paint job and, of course, the required lightning bolt on the side. A battery in the car makes the headlights run.
This production of "Grease" might come with the Children's Musical Theaterworks imprint, but it's considered the company's "marquee" show for the season, which means it features a cast of all ages.
For director Josh Montgomery, who has been busy with the larger issues of the production -- which includes some slightly more modern orchestrations of the familiar tunes that "Grease" fans know and love -- he was happy to be out of the difficult task of finding the car and then getting it into the theater.
"I'm amazed," he says. "My original go-to was the whole golf cart idea."
Being in a musical might be fun and all, but the car might be expected to worry: But what happens after the final performance?
Rest assured, Mr. Chevy. After investing $3,000 in you, CMT isn't about to send you to the junk yard. Wettstead hopes that the company will be able to rent the car to other productions of "Grease" looking for a crowd-pleasing effect.
Robinson, who spent so much time under the car preparing it for stage, is happy about that.
"I think it's cool that it will end its life like this," he says.
After cutting off the car's roof to make it a convertible and applying a glossy coat of candy-apple-red paint to one side, the car was cut in half so it could fit through the doors of the Fresno Memorial Auditorium.
The halves rode the theater's lift up to stage level, where they reunited.
Theater preview "Grease," through March 23, Fresno Memorial Auditorium, 2425 Fresno St. cmtworks.org, (866)-973-9610. $12-$22/
Watch Joe Wettstead talk about the experience of transforming "Greased Lightning" at fresnobee.com/video
