Review: VAPE! A GREASE MUSICAL PARODY at The Apollo Theater

When you show up at 2550 N. Lincoln Ave, you’ll step into The Apollo Theater and be instantly transported to Rydell High School. Vape! The Grease Parody musical, directed by Jack Plotnick, shows love and respect to its imitation the best way it knows how — with creative commentary, meta music, and joyous jokes that are sure to make you chuckle, laugh, or anything in between. 

As with any parody, the content is exaggerated, self-aware, and over the top, yet the eight-person cast is strong in their performance as our favorite characters, particularly vocally. Danny (Will Leonard) is the same suave greaser we remember — now equipped with a vape. After he and Sandy (Jenna Smith) have a brief summer fling, Sandy starts school at Rydell High, and the two reunite. We also meet the rest of the familiar high schoolers: Jan (Emma Dunlop), Frenchy (Mai Hartwick), Rizzo (Suzanne Sole), Kenickie (Shea Hopkins), Sonny (Corey Barlow), and Marty (Sophia Brazda). 

With no intermission, the show moves pretty quickly as we move through the plot that mostly parallels that of Grease, but you’re not there for the actual story — you’re there for the lighthearted laughs, spins on the classic soundtrack, and nods to modern vices and local shoutouts like Steppenwolf and the Lyric Opera. From puppets to vape kazoos to hybrid cars, there are prop gags and recurring jokes and many costume changes as most of the ensemble — notably Suzanne Sole — rotates through a cast of characters. There’s even moments of breaking the fourth wall, such as when we get a list of alternative names that the cast came up with for Goop’s “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle. And with that, be warned that there is an abundance of sexual humor so as to avoid being the mother and child leaving in the middle of the show after a particularly crude song about a sexual act that keeps repeated over and over again. 

With the classic high school gym banners on the theater walls, playlist of pop hits getting you pumped up, and the cornhole that audience members got to play in before the show, the set design and pre-show atmosphere is nostalgic and entertaining — which makes the plethora of AI-generated posters in the lobby particularly disappointing. As live theater continues to be a powerful resistance in the creative arts to the parasite that is generative AI, seeing AI being used in any part of a theatrical production does feel like a betrayal of the very point and purpose of human-created art. Seeing all these posters plastered across the theater lobby before the show even started did taint the experience — not a knock on the performance of the cast at all, but a questionable decision on the part of the production crew. It may be a small detail, but it’s a detail that is at its core antithetical to the depth of beauty and range of emotions that artists evoke on and off the stage. 

If you’re looking for 90 minutes of nostalgia and parody at its finest, add this joyful musical romp to your itinerary for some Summer Lovin', even as summer comes to a close. Vape! The Grease Parody is now playing at The Apollo Theater (2550 N. Lincoln Ave) through January 3, 2027. 

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