Review: GREASE at Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 3rd October 2024.

The musical, Grease, that opened over half a century ago on February 14, 1972, at the Eden Theatre, is back in Adelaide, presented by John Frost for Crossroads Live Australia. The book, music, and lyrics are by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, with additional songs by Barry Gibb, John Farrar, Louis St. Louis, and Scott Simon. This production is directed with imagination by Luke Joslin.

First impressions are important and my first impression was that it was often loud, very loud, bordering on the threshold of pain. Following the Overture and voiceover by WAXX radio station DJ, “the main brain” Vince Fontaine, it began with the poignant song, Sandy, sung by the Australian girl, Sandy Dumbrowski, and ‘greaser’, Danny Zuko, as they gently lament their separation at the end of the summer when they had met and fallen in love at the beach. Suddenly, Grease is the Word, the opening number introducing ten teenage students, exploded on the ears at far more decibels than comfortable, Other big ensemble numbers were also overloud.

Playing Sandy as an Australian only harks back to the film. In the earlier stage productions, the character was an all-American girl of Polish descent. Although the original surname, Dumbrowski, is used here, the film changed her surname to Olssen. This is only one of many changes that have been made to the musical since it began, when it was far raunchier and edgy, and more of an ensemble, having Danny and Sandy as minor characters. There was strong language and violence. It has progressively become more sanitised, influenced heavily by the saccharine film adaptation, which is the source of many of the songs, which were not there before. It began, in fact, as a play with music, far from the family-rated high school romance musical that it has become.

It’s back to the 1958/9 school year at Rydell High School in working-class North West Chicago as Danny tells the boys, the T-Birds, of his latest conquest, in a display of toxic masculinity, hiding the fact that he had fallen in love, and Sandy tells the girls, the Pink Ladies, of her lost love, in the shared ballad, Summer Nights. He had lied to her about the school that he attended, and she had switched schools at the last minute. Seeing each other again in the same school comes as a big surprise to them both. He pretends that he is no longer interested in her to impress his friends. The Pink Ladies warn her about Danny and his womanising. What happens to them is the central part of the musical, but there are numerous other stories running through the show, involving the lives of the other students.

The central roles of Danny and Sandy are played by Fabian Andrés and Annelise Hall. Andrés looks and sounds just right in the role of the bad boy romantic lead, with a strong singing voice, and he dances well, too. I last saw Hall in that wonderful new surreal musical, The Marvellous Elephant Man the Musical. Here, she is playing a very different role as the innocent good girl, Sandy, and is endearing as the rather naïve young woman, out of her depth and trying to fit in. There is a convincing connection between their characters.

There are plenty of other strong performances from the rest of the cast, too many to mention individually. There are more than twenty characters, all well played, but it is an ensemble piece, and as an ensemble, the cast performs with great enthusiasm and precision. There are a number of standout performances, in particular, coming from MacKenzie Dunn, as Betty Rizzo, and the sensational dancing of Olivia Carniato, as Charlene ‘Cha-Cha’ DiGregorio.

There are notable cameo appearances from ever-popular entertainer, Patti Newton, as the austere English mistress, Miss Lynch, Jay Laga’aia, as the DJ and master of ceremonies, Vince Fontaine, and Paulini, as Teen Angel, Frenchy's guardian angel to whom she turns after dropping out of school to study to be a beautician, only to drop out of that, too.

James Browne’s costumes are bright and colourful and his set design, massive bleachers and panels, looks good but takes up much of the stage, rather restricting the performance space remaining at the front for the big ensemble dance routines. That brings me to the impressive choreography by Eric Giancola that fills the stage with excitement, time and again.

The musical, though, is essentially a vehicle for the many catchy songs, with just enough of a narrative to tie them together. The songs and dance routines are what makes this musical so popular. This was evidenced after the bows when the cast sang and danced their way through many of the songs again, with the audience clapping and singing along.

The departing audience was in no hurry to leave, filling the foyer and the street outside, discussing the production excitedly, with smiling faces everywhere.

Photography, Naomi Jellicoe.