BWW Reviews: GREASE Is the Show to See

Reviewed by Christine Pyman, Thursday 7th August 2014

Grease, that longest running Broadway show, is here, in Adelaide, and Adelaide is loving it.

I will be upfront here and confess that Grease is probably one of my all time most disliked stories, but this performance won even me over, it was such fun, with great energy, sound, lighting and choreography, simply great!

With performers like these, every character is a stand out, with high-octane performances over the entire stage, resulting in an embarrassment of riches. With long term stage and television luminaries such as Bert Newton, John Paul Young, Todd McKenney and Val Lehman on stage, acting almost as anchors for the swirling energy and talent of the main characters and cast, success was assured.

The audience took this story to heart, and responded by accepting the storyline as a kind of family history, with a generous, sharing attitude to witnessing the fun. Gretel Scarlett, as Sandy, wowed from the minute she opened her mouth with her stunningly beautiful voice managing to showcase Sandy's fragility and strength perfectly. Rob Mills, as Danny, shone with his body language and acting, but unfortunately his microphone failed to carry his voice strongly enough to place it where it deserved to be, heard loud and clear to all.

The energy and talent of all the performers was seriously epic in scale, but even amongst this talent fest some stood out and managed to steal the stage. Todd McKenney was one of these, and the other was Andrea Arena. McKenney as Teen Angel somehow simply made everyone else on stage vanish, and even dealt with the one piece of 'audience gentleman heckling' so perfectly that one was left wondering if it was really a planned part of the show, and the audience responded, with generosity and delight.

Arena played Cha Cha, the aptly named bad girl sorceress of dance from a rival high school. It would be a pleasure to just sit and watch her dance, even without the joy of her acting skills. A bonus of this version of Jim Jacobs's & Warren Casey's much loved Grease, was that the music was performed live, which always adds to the excitement and drama of a show.

This performance was beautifully enhanced by the clever set design of Terry Parsons, and costumes by Andreane Neofitou. Mention should be made of the two main supporting characters of Kernickie and Rizzo, played and sung so well by Stephen Mahy and Lucy Maunder, and the wonderfully comedic timing and acting of Eli Cooper (Eugene), but the entire cast were all so outstandingly good, that each and everyone of them deserves a review. Time and space do not permit and, instead, I am going to recommend that you go and see for yourself, and if you don't, you will have missed out on a wonderful feel-good event of musical theatre.

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