Power failure interrupts weekend performance of 'Grease' in Meredith

MEREDITH — Some customers of New Hampshire Electric Co-op experienced power failure Saturday night related to Eversource hardware.

"There was an equipment failure in our right of way that affected three of New Hampshire Electric Co-op's substations," William Hinkle, media relations manager for Eversource, wrote in an email.

"We did some switching between our substations, which reduced the outage, but it wasn’t fully restored until the Eversource crew was done,” said Seth Wheele, NHEC communications administrator. 

The outage also interrupted a performance of Grease at Interlakes Theatre.

According to Interlakes Producer Nancy Barry, some of the lights and instruments failed about three quarters of the way through the first act.

“We thought we blew a fuse,” Barry said of the initial partial power failure. “We used our spotlights to light the rest of the act. That was the only thing we could do to keep light on the stage."

Barry learned later that it was power failure and explained the situation to the audience. For a while, the spotlights still worked.

“I put spotlights on people so they could walk to the bathroom and during intermission everything blew.”

Once immersed in darkness, Barry found herself in a bit of a situation. There were over 300 people in attendance of the show, and many of them were seniors. It was also a particularly dark night, so getting people out safely became the priority.

“At the end we decided not to continue with act two, so we asked the actors to come off stage and escort the audience members down the stairs and out the door with their phone flashlights. As soon as I said the actors are coming out, this blond woman raised her hand and said ‘I get Danny Zuko!’”

Fortunately all members of the audience were safely escorted out, and given tickets to Sunday’s final show of the same musical.