Lyceum, Sheffield – until 9 October 2021
Reviewed by Alison Beaumont
3***
For anyone that doesn’t know Grease is a musical film from 1971 which rose to fame starring the one and only John Travollta and Olivia Newton-John. Danny (Dan Partridge) and Sandy (Ellie Kingdon) meet on the beach during the summer for a whirlwind romance and never think they will see each other again until unexpectedly Sandy attends Rydell High and bumps into Danny who is no longer the sweet Danny she met at the beach. It follows their journey of attraction towards each other.
Grease is one of my all time favourite musicals, having watched it millions of times on TV and numerous times at the theatre and unfortunately on this occasion I was disappointed but the good old traditional songs of Grease did still want to get me singing.
I will start off with a few negatives and end with the positives, although this is my personal opinion and others may not feel the same.
I felt that although Sandy’s vocals were good there were times when she was singing loud that to me it sounded a bit screechy, when singing with Danny she often overpowered him with her volume and you couldn’t hear him that great, a bit more work needs to be done on this to get the balance right.
Rizzo (Tendai Rinomhota) to me wasn’t a strong enough character to give the role of Rizzo the justice it deserves. Rizzo is the leader of the pink ladies and I felt she needed more power when delivering her lines, other than the script being spoken her delivery was on much the same level as the other pink ladies and didn’t make her stand out enough as the leader.
In a few of the scenes there was a radio playing in the background which I found quite off putting and distracting from being able to listen to what was being said.
In this particular version of Grease there was the addition of the “tattoo song”, many may like this addition giving it a different slant from the Grease musicals of old but to me it could easily be scrapped.
Having pointed out the negatives there were in fact some positives of the show.
The T-birds dancing in Grease lightening was brilliant, well synchronised and full of energy.
Roger (Josh Barnett) was the actor who stood out for me and his rendition of the “Mooning song” with Jan (Maeve Byrne) was definitely an highlight of the show. Personally I could have seen him playing the role of Danny really well. At this point Josh to me was the best singer until Jacob Fisher portrayed the role of Teen Angel and sang “Beauty School Drop Out” and definitely gave Josh a run for his money. Excellent vocals, even with the few mishaps that happened with the background dancers this did not distract from another good scene.
Everyone’s dancing abilities were great, “The Hand Jive” was another good dance routine. For me the dancer that stood out was Marty (Hannah-Faith Marram), really good rhythm and technique.
You could tell all the actors/actresses/dancers all thoroughly enjoyed being in this musical and gave it their all.
The audience participation in the mega mix made this musical end on a high. The audience loved this, and what is there not to love when you can join in the with songs that you know word for word. Overall the musical ended on a high.