Their director’s death was inspiration to make the show go on

Grief that hung like storm clouds was parted Friday night at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres as the nation’s largest dinner theater dealt with a tragic dilemma.

How would actors and audiences react to the opening of “Grease” just two days after artistic director Michael Brindisi, who had worked at Chanhassen for 50-plus years and led it for the past 37, died? Would it doom the production? How would the shock of mourning affect what is usually a peppy and boisterous show?

The theater didn’t even consider postponing or canceling this “Grease,” an official said, but instead charged ahead in a situation so rare, most can only recall composer Jonathan Larson’s 1996 death a day before off-Broadway previews of his iconic musical, “Rent.”

“It’s what Michael would have wanted,” said Michelle Barber, Brindisi’s widow and a fellow actor. “The actor in him would’ve loved all this acclamation and outpouring.”

Barber arrived at the theater hours after returning from Australia, where she was visiting family, to give the actors a pep talk at a brush-up rehearsal Friday afternoon. She was greeted with tears and hugs.

“Michael is in this room with us, and he’s so proud of each of you,” Barber told the ensemble. “He wants you to go up there and carry forward. Go get ’em!”

Brindisi died at his home in Chanhassen on Feb. 5 at age 76. Barber revealed that the cause was heart failure.

Barber was accompanied to the rehearsal by their daughter, Cat Brindisi-Darrow, who also had flown in the day before, from Florida where she is associate artistic director of the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota.

Dressed like her father in a jacket with a baseball cap pulled low over her brow and carrying the cane that he had used since 2013 after an operation for stenosis, Brindisi-Darrow shared an email with the “Grease” ensemble that her dad had sent her.

Dreams are realized regardless of whether or not one reaches a goal, he told her in the email.

“It’s in the doing where you succeed, not the results,” Brindisi-Darrow said.

A Philadelphia kid who loved baseball and the accordion, Brindisi acted on Broadway and became a Minnesota legend. Chanhassen thrives with 300 employees and a bevy of theater and comedy shows, concerts and a bar. But that’s not the real measure of its impact.

It’s a place of cherished celebration where people have marked birthdays, weddings, graduations and, sometimes, death. In his 37 years at the helm, Brindisi directed 120 productions at the theater, entertaining millions who flock to the suburban playhouse by bus and car from as far away as the Dakotas and Nebraska.

“Michael made people feel special, and he celebrated their humanity with a big heart,” said Nancy Nelson, the onetime broadcaster who now works as a greeter at Chanhassen. Nelson spoke before the Friday evening performance. “He made so many dreams come true.”

Brindisi also provided employment and livelihoods for thousands of actors, musicians and stagehands. Some of them returned Friday to the theater.

“I met my husband when we were both working here,” said actor Emily Rose Skinner after the show ended. Skinner has performed in 19 productions at Chanhassen but is not in the current one. “All of us — we love this state and region — owe Michael so much.”

“Grease” ensemble member Laura Rudolph, who dressed in homage to Brindisi for the rehearsal, said that he not only preached values but that he lived them in a way that she and those she met at Chanhassen have become.

“It’s a cliché to say that you become family here, but Michael made that true,” Rudolph said. “When we strike out to do anything, like build our own company, we feel we can because of not just the success that Michael had, but the values that he used to build the company here.”

Brindisi usually sat at table No. 415 on opening nights, and it was occupied by longtime general manager Solveig Theis and her party on Friday.

“I owe my whole career to Michael,” Theis said. “A lot of us can say that, but it’s true. He touched so many lives.”

Brindisi always underplayed his accomplishments, dressing in jeans and T-shirts with a signature baseball cap. He shied away from the spotlight.

But the show was all about him Friday as Nelson welcomed the capacity audience to “a night of celebration in Brindisi’s honor.”

She also led the crowd in raising their glasses in a toast “to the joy of musical theater that he so believed in, to this last production … to his final bow.”

At the end of the show, Brindisi-Darrow was teary-eyed.

“Thank you,” she said to Maureen Sherman-Mendez, who plays dancer Cha-Cha in “Grease.” “I just wept throughout the show because this group of actors doing this show is so overwhelming.”

Former news anchor Don Shelby, who took to the stage after retiring, was directed by Brindisi and Nelson in “Love Letters.”

Brindisi taught him generosity and grace, Shelby said Friday before the show, adding that the director also impressed him with the breadth of his talents.

“Michael had a way of doing shows that matched entertainment with profound drama,” Shelby said, adding that at the end of rehearsals with Brindisi, he usually liked to tick him off by quoting Prospero from “The Tempest,” Shelby said Friday before the performance.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. … We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”