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Grease

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Four stars

 

Teenage dreams have rarely sounded sweeter than in Sam Hardie’s loving revival of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s original piece of rock and roll revivalism. Jacobs and Casey’s quifftastic confection may have been sweetened for Randal Kleiser’s smash hit movie that saw John Travolta and Olivia Newton John keep both the punk and disco hordes at bay from the number 1 pop chart slot in the summer of ‘78, but happy days are here again in a show that takes its moves more from the original stage show. 

 

As good girl Sandy spars with tough guy Danny after a holiday romance that sees them join forces with their respective gangs once school starts. What follows sees them make a song and dance of an everyday tale of first love, peer group pressure, youth cult tribes, the growing pains of friendship and learning to be who you want to be that points to teen drama past, present and future. The mass earworm familiarity of Jacobs and Casey’s songbook helps in this co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Blackpool Grand Theatre, where it opened earlier this year.

 

Blythe Jandoo brings attitude to Sandy that is more than a match for Alexander Service as Danny, with able support from Fiona Wood as a badass Rizzo and Tyler Collins as a strutting Kenickie. Under the guidance of musical director Richard Reeday, the massed ranks of Pitlochry’s seventeen-strong ensemble also take up instruments to act as the band in what has become PFT’s house style.

 

Set-pieces abound on Nick Trueman’s retro cool set beneath Rory Beaton’s pink-hued lighting, in which a jukebox and a couple of diner chairs can become a hot rod as the Burger Palace Boys belt out Greased Lightin’. Solo highlights include Jandoo’s turn singing Hopelessly Devoted to You, while Wood shows bad girl Rizzo’s sensitive side on There Are Worse Things I Could Do. Keith Macpherson, meanwhile, has a ball as perma-grinning TV host Vince Fontaine. 

 

Best of all is April Nerissa Hudson as Frenchy, who enters the dreamscape of Beauty School Dropout accompanied by a gaggle of Teen Angels clad in Julie Carlin’s fantastical costumes and brought to spinning life by Kally Lloyd-Jones’ witty choreography. 

 

Jacobs and Casey’s version of rock and roll rebellion may be more Bill Haley than Gene Vincent, but Hardie’s fresh take on things makes for a pitch perfect accompaniment to summer nights, where Grease is still very much the word.


The Herald, June 23rd 2025

 

Ends 

 

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