Grease

The musical Grease is one of the few musicals where the movie improved on the original stage production by adding songs by Barry Gibb and John Farrar (“Hopelessly Devoted to You”/“You’re The One That I Want”/ ”Grease”), plus “Blue Moon” and others. These additional songs are all in Harvest Rain’s latest incantation of everybody’s favorite musical of 50s high-school life, but they don’t do much for the production which is a hit and miss affair.

Naomi Price’s direction sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. She’s not helped by a static and cumbersome set which is supposed to represent various locations but just looks like a series of rostrums, and a book that’s become clichéd.

Blake Testro does well as Danny, capturing the posturing of the smooth, slick, rocker, scoring on all his numbers, but Hannah King’s Sandy, while she looked sweet and innocent, had major pitch problems on opening night.

Belinda Heit was an OK Miss Lynch in her brief walk-ons, Michael Priest was a sleazy Vince Fontaine, and Elissa Jenkins had no trouble being bitchy as Rizzo. Her “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” was one of the night’s best solos. Best of all however was Luke Kennedy’s Teen Angel; dressed in a glitter suit, and with vocals that soared into the stratosphere, he made “Beauty School Dropout” into a showstopper.

The band was tight with especially good brass work from Nathan Willis and Greg Wilson, and the chorus, well-drilled by Callum Mansfield, worked hard to generate excitement.

Peter Pinne