| Big-Stage Class Tour for Denbighshire Dancer |
Grease |
| InTheatre Productions , Donald Gordon Theatre, Wales Millennium Centre , September 4, 2024 |
The London venues display their full cast and company names on outside billboards. It is rare to take a walk past the theatres of the West End and not see names recognisable from performance in Wales. Sam Ebenezer was there this summer at the Arts Theatre, Callum Scott Howells at the Haymarket. So too with this classy, big tour revival of “Grease”, the ever-popular show with music, lyrics and book by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. It is a big company, twenty-two on stage. One among them has a pig-tail, probably not quite correct for the era of the 1950s Rydell High School. He is Dylan Gordon-Jones. The young performer from Rhyl has a credit as swing, one of four. He is a superb dancer throughout. In the high-energy number that opens the second act he is in the front of the dance ensemble. The production off-stage has big names. Nikolai Foster directs. Arlene Phillips' choreography reprises the moves of the time, the swirls, the kicks forward from the knee, the rock-back on the heels. There is a incandescent talent throughout. Marley Fenton and Hope Dawe lead as on-off players in romance Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski. Other characters, just a few, include Rebecca Stenhouse as Betty Rizzo, Ben Nicholas as Kenickie, Kieran Lynch as Doody, Lewis Day as Roger, Sario Solomon as Sonny, Alicia Belgarde as Frenchy, Emerald B as Jan, India Chadwick as Marty, Jayd'N Tyrone as Eugene, Phoebe Roberts as Patty. A competition at a Halloween event is scene for the dazzling dance of Deena Kapadia as Cha Cha. Life in the Chicago-located school has elements of harshness to it for the young people. Few adults intervene on stage. The local cop is aggressive. “Don't get smart with me, punk” accompanies a threat to run the kids downtown. Parents are absent. “You ain't afraid of what your old man thinks, are you?” asks one teenager of another. A line runs “stupid teachers are mean and vicious” although Dominique Planter's teacher Miss Lynch is a guiding presence. There is small show of much school-work going on. Joe Gash is Vince Fontaine and Teen Angel at a music event. The lifestyle props for the first generation of leisured teenagers are evident; the Burger Palace, the pyjama party, the cheer-leading, the drive-in cinema, the ice rink. “Grease” is powered by a string of familiar tunes: “Summer Nights” kicks off. Centre scene for “Greased Lightnin’ is a newly acquired limo. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is a solo of yearning after the big composite numbers. “You’re the One That I Want” brings it all to a close. Or rather, not quite. The cheering audience is on its feet and wants more and the company does a composite reprise of the big numbers. An early line sets the tone between the genders. The boys are described to new-comer Sandy are “slobs. You think they spend a dime on their lunch?” As in much classic musical theatre there is not a whole lot of plot in “Grease.” The scare of an unwanted pregnancy sends a frisson of alarm late on. But it is a picture from a particular place of a universal subject. The young- alone or in their tribes and sub-tribes- negotiate the unsettled and uneasy route toward affiliation and intimacy. That universalism comes wrapped in a production of colossal energy, warmth and likeability. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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