You gotta feel for . No collateral casualty from the Wagatha Christie trial has been more deeply wounded.
As Andre geared up for his West End debut as hip-swivelling DJ Vince Fontaine in this lacklustre revival of the 1971 musical (later made into the ever-popular John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John film) ’s reported comments about his ‘chipolata’ turned this production into a side-show compared to events at the .
It would have all been so much easier to gloss over had Andre’s Vince not had the line ‘The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The big one!’
Whether intended as irony or not, nervous laughter rippled through this venue’s cavernous auditorium before the Mysterious Girl star (whose Vince is also played by during this show’s run) gets into his stride, singing sweetly the first of his two numbers.
From underneath a fathom-deep tan Andre emits a cuddle-worthy likability while throwing Elvis-inspired shapes. Yet elsewhere there is very little about this show to like.
Instead of the palm tree backdrop of the film, Nikolai Foster’s production, first seen in Leicester’s Curve in 2016, opts for the grit of the original stage show, setting much of the action among school gymnasium climbing bars.
A fringe of ropes hanging over the stage adds to the threadbare feel as the evening stumbles between the hits spawned by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s score: Summer Nights, Grease Is The Word and You’re the One That I Want, all performed with more volume than conviction.
As Danny and Sandy, Dan Partridge and Olivia Moore try in vain to conjure chemistry from an old-school story that asks us to celebrate how a clever girl submits to a leather-jacketed meathead.
If you are going to revive a show that is brimful of sexism, you have to find a way to subvert it. This production just embraces it and hopes nostalgia will carry the day.
The one stand-out positive is Jocasta Almgill as Rizzo (the tough girl played by Stockard Channing in the movie) who turns the lesser known number There Are Worse Things I Could Do into a hands-down showstopper.
Almgill, and even Andre, deserve better.
Grease is at Dominion Theatre, .
