Review: ANCIENT GREASE, The Vaults

At The Vaults, Ancient Grease arrives with impeccable comic timing. The leather-jacketed mythology of Grease has rarely been far from London’s cultural bloodstream. Indeed, the city has been particularly well supplied with it of late thanks to Secret Cinema, which mounted Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical in Battersea Park last year.

Ancient Grease, however, has little interest in reverent recreation. This is not Rydell High but Olympus High, where demi-gods behave with all the hormonal self-control one might expect from immortals who peaked in Year Ten.

Many pastiches rely on a familiarity with what is being spoofed. The audience does half the work while the show nudges knowingly. The best examples, though, transcend their sources and become something gleefully anarchic in their own right. Think Rocky Horror, which began upstairs at the Royal Court as a darkly humorous sex-positive singalong parody of B-movie horrors, before transferring to the silver screen. Ancient Grease aims for that territory and, more often than not, lands close to bullseye.

The decision to relocate the action from a school in small town America to one on Mount Olympus initially comes across as hacky: the premise has more than a waft of Percy Jackson & the Olympians as well as the occasional whiff of Wednesday in its parade of hormonally unstable young immortals. Yet writer Lady Aria Grey and director Dan Wye give the piece a distinctive flavour of its own.

Time and money have clearly not been squandered on such fripperies as dialogue and costuming but on the real currency of Grease mythology: a young charismatic and diverse cast and sexy chariots that glide across the stage like the glammed-up penis extensions that they are.

That stage, incidentally, is all part of the fun. The production is performed in traverse, with the audience facing each other across a thin strip of playing space that leaves the performers never more than inches away from disaster. These actors are genuine triple-threats: singing, acting and somehow managing not to topple off the runway while doing both.

The proximity also fuels the show’s gleefully interactive spirit. Those who have forgotten or ignored the first rule of affairs of this sort are rarely left in peace. Characters wander by offering fist bumps, high fives and the occasional finger point and accusatory cry of “You never called!” At one point the audience is taught a dance routine and encouraged to gyrate enthusiastically in their seats. The immersive seating arrangement means nobody is more than a few metres from the action, which turns the room at times into something halfway between cabaret, concert and controlled riot.

The cast commit wholeheartedly to the chaos. Peter Camilleri’s Zeus is Danny in all but name even if he has swapped out the leather jacket for a leather skirt. As leader of the macho Omegas, he faces off against the hardbitten Aphrodite (a deliciously sharp Lucy Penrose) and her Alphas. Phillipa Leadbetter plays Hera (the Sandy role) as one part Kylie, nine parts Kath & Kim.

Safia Bartley’s Athena delivers smart comic timing, Grace Kelly Miller relishes Atropos’ wicked mischief, Christopher Patten-Walker gives Ares a belligerent physicality and Ollie Thomas Smith makes a charmingly awkward Hephaestus. Several of the company also appeared in Secret Cinema’s recent Grease outing, lending the show an extra layer of in-joke knowingness as performers who have previously roamed Rydell High now let rip in Olympus.

The songs are where the show truly earns its ambrosia. The titles gleefully twist the originals and the lyrics sparkle whenever they manage to cut through the occasionally swampy acoustics of the railway arches beneath Waterloo. When the trains aren’t rumbling overhead or the voices not disappearing into a murky sound mix, there are some devilishly inspired lyrics that could lead to this becoming a cult classic in the years to come.

Like all parodies, Ancient Grease occasionally overstays a gag while the proctological humour could comfortably be taken down a peg(ging) or two. The plot and script sometimes cleave too closely to the iconic source material, preferring deep-cut nods over delivering its own inventive twists. But the infectious energy is undeniable, and the musical numbers keep the plot bowling forward with admirable momentum.

There is also something quietly clever beneath the smut. In the 1970s, the original Grease musical, much like the TV show Happy Days, looked back at the hopeful optimism of the postwar Fifties through the worldweary lens of a decade worn down by a damaging foreign war, a corrupt President in the White House, deep economic troubles and fuel crises (plus ça change…). Ancient Grease is undoubtedly more sexually explicit than its ancestor, yet it still reaches for that same sense of carefree possibility. Beneath the innuendo and demi-god hormones lies a surprisingly affectionate and effective celebration of youth, friendship and the thrill of a good tune.

In the end, comparison with Secret Cinema’s lavish Grease spectacles is inevitable. Those productions may be grander, glossier and more faithful to the source. But Ancient Grease has something they occasionally lack: pure, shameless fun. Where Secret Cinema recreates Rydell High with loving precision, Ancient Grease straps itself into a chrome-plated chariot and floors the accelerator. The bigger show may have the scale, but this one has the joy.

And when the dust settles, it’s Ancient Grease that disappears triumphantly into the distance, leaving its blockbuster predecessors blinking in the rear-view mirror. In short, this is the one that we want.

Ancient Grease continues at The Vaults until 31 May.