Reviews

Before Grease became a popular movie, subsequently sanitized into just another high school musical, it was a darker stage musical with a real underbelly of teenage angst and delinquency. It was far edgier, raunchier, and more brutal, especially so in this ‘original’ pre-Broadway version, currently being presented by Squabbalogic.

While the Grease we know now is full-on 50s nostalgia, this raw original version was a kind of anti-nostalgia. The coarse language, attitude, cruelty and bullying of delinquent teenagers are far more in-your face.

On the menu at the Aegean Restaurant in Fitzroy this week are large helpings of physical humour, outrageously spicy political incorrectness, lashings of laughter, and a delicious 3-course meal to wash it all down. Who knew dining out could be such a chaotic adventure?

Jessica Pratt has sung Lucia in some of the biggest opera houses in the world. Melbourne audiences were luckier than that. They got to hear her in the intimate Her Majesty’s theatre where she rarely needed to open up that magnificent instrument and so was able to give a much subtler, nuanced performance. Her pianissimo singing was particularly beautiful, and made her a more vulnerable Lucia than one would find in a bigger theatre.

Oh joy oh rapture unforeseen. This is an elegantly staged and beautifully sung production.

Husband and wife creative team John and Susan Brown has created a Pinafore that sticks to the era and the script. It proves that even over a century old the script can still be just as funny and entertaining as it is.