This Grease isn’t the one that I want
GREASE, in case it slid by you, is the story of dangerous Danny bringing out the bad girl in strait-laced Sandy. It began as a stage musical in 1971, and was a clunking ‘hunk o’ junk’, to borrow one of its own phrases.
The 1978 movie, loosely based on Jim Jacobs’ and Warren Casey’s original book and including the gems in a golden score, was pure greased lightning, climaxing in You’re The One That I Want, with Sandy rebooted as Danny’s fantasy femme fatale, hot to trot in spray-on black Spandex.
As messages to one’s daughters go, it needs a snake-hipped star with John Travolta’s cheeky charm and a bucket of Brylcreem to make it bounce. All missing from Nikolai Foster’s gritty, city-set revival, which reverts to the original patchy plot with unfamiliar characters popping up, doing their thing, and never becoming part of the story. Roger (Noah Harrison) lets rip momentarily with Mooning (in both senses); Jake Reynolds’ delightful Doody claims to be a guitar novice and gets everyone grooving to Those Magic Changes; Katie Lee’s Cha Cha dances up one heck of a storm.
But nice Dan Partridge struggles to persuade as Danny, the strutting king of cool; and there’s little spark between him and sweetly soaring Olivia Moore, a dead-ringer for the Duchess of Cambridge, and more convincing as candy Sandy than randy Sandy.
As Kenickie, leader of the Burger House Boys, Paul French overdoes the brutishness. Jocasta Almgill’s Rizzo brings the house down with her bitterly passionate There Are Worse Things I Could Do, but she’s just too nasty.
Pocket-rocket Peter Andre has a small role as a squeaky DJ; then sprouts pink wings and puts on his dancing shoes to play a camp angel encouraging beauty-school drop-out, Frenchy to get back to High School. Cute, but he swallows the lyrics.
Even the frocks and the rock ’n’ rolling failed to knock my socks off. Hopelessly devoted I remain, but this ain’t the nostalgia fest that I want.