The Stage

Grease

Published Thursday 26 May 2011 at 10:52 by Mark Shenton

Few musicals are as well oiled as Grease, and a sufficiently lubricated party audience never fails to rise to the occasion, especially for the megamix finale of the show’s greatest hits. Long before Mamma Mia!, Dirty Dancing or Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Grease became the rabble-rousing pop hit of choice. But unlike the others that have superseded it, the unusual thing is that the bulk of its score is in fact original to the theatre where it began as an off-Broadway show in 1972, before becoming better known for the 1978 film version that added hits like You’re the One that I Want.

Danny Bayne (Danny) in Grease at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes Photo: Alessandro Pinn

David Gilmore’s production, featuring vivid, vigorous period choreography by Arlene Phillips, has long become the show that audiences want, ever since it first opened at the Dominion Theatre in 1993 and has been in and out of the West End ever since. Now, no sooner has its latest run closed there than it is back out on the touring road, this time with Danny Bayne, the Italia Conti trained singer and dancer who won the ITV reality TV contest Grease is the Word to play Danny when this production was revived at the Piccadilly, reprising that role.

He’s got the right cocky confidence and slicked-back swagger, and can certainly move. LIPA graduate Carina Gillespie, too, has the sweet innocence and vulnerability required for Sandy, “lousy with virginity” as the show’s crisp lyric has it. The show suggests the way to get your man is to get raunchy, and she duly does - what a change to Legally Blonde today, where the message instead is to get educated and leave the bastard behind.

Audiences are nevertheless still hopelessly devoted to it. That’s not always earned here - there are times when the production becomes a grim parody of itself, with a supporting cast who are palpably too old to still be school kids, and Robin Cousins on weird autopilot as a (far from) Teen Angel.