Grease

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on GREASE at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 20.1.12
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3 stars ***

WHAT DO YOU WANT, on a cold night in January? A touch of sunshine, plenty of sugar-pink decor, some top-class body-popping, and a blast of teenage American High School culture, set at the moment when that phenomenon first burst on an unsuspecting world? Then this Paul Nicholas/David Ian UK touring production of Grease is the show for you, as it arrives in Glasgow for a brief two-week run, before moving on to Aberdeen.

It’s not that this stage version of the story can ever quite match the special energy of the 1978 film, starring John Travolta as leather-jacketed 1950’s “greaser” Danny, and Olivia Newton John as his good-girl true love, Sandy. The singing is a little too polite, the cast don’t look like teenagers, and the whole show lacks a certain edge of falsetto desperation, as Danny Bayne’s elegant Danny moves suavely round the stage, looking like Travolta, but moving more like a Strictly Come Dancing professional.

Everything else about the show delivers full value, though, as a cast of 25 – plus X Factor star Mary Byrne, in a guest appearance as a cuddly guardian angel – whip their way through some razor-sharp choreography, inspired by a mixture of 1950’s jive and late-Seventies disco. The story is feeble, full of suppressed hints – particularly in the brief panic over bad girl Rizzo’s possible pregnancy – of what could have been a harder-hitting 1950’s story.

The original songs are superb, though, from Summer Nights through to the iconic You’re The One That I Want. Carina Gillespie, as Sandy, makes a convincingly sweet and shy leading lady. And above the stage, dressed in sharp pink jackets for the high-school hop, musical director Barney Ashworth and his six-strong band give it best, in a fine rock-and-roll performance that binds this candy-coloured show together, from start to finish.