Grease — Review

I wasn’t sure what to expect as the curtain went up on University of St Andrews’ Musical Theatre Society’s performance of Grease, directed by Caroline Daley and produced by Siobhan Williams. ‘Grease is the Word’ reverberated around the Byre Theatre as the whole cast stood on a bare stage, performing a dance which was slightly out of time. It was a slow start which did not set the tone for the remainder of the performance: a musically impressive, incredibly comedic and entertaining, big hug of a Thursday evening. 

The stage setting was minimalist, with the cast making the full use out of well-placed props in order to fully set the scene. Grease Lightning, Kenickie's car, was a painted piece of cardboard, yet still felt entirely convincing as the cast belted ‘Grease Lightning’, apart from perhaps when Grease Lightning collapsed on the floor, yet Ian Crews (Kenickie) manages to keep his Kenickie-cool as he positions the car back into place for the end of the song.

Wardrobe did the heavy lifting in this production to set the Grease scene - from Sandy’s demure, classically fifties skirts, to the Pink Ladies’ pink satin embossed jackets, and the T-birds’ uniform of dark-wash denim, white t-shirts, and leather jackets. The wardrobe was all perfectly picked for character, and excellently transported the audience to Grease’s 1950s setting. 

Callum Wardman-Browne as Danny and Maeve Murray as Sandy make a charming pair in this production. Their ‘Summer Nights’ (despite slight audio failings as the ensembles’ chants entirely drown them out in parts) was vocally impressive, and cemented them well in their wistful paramour roles for the remainder of the play.

Ian Crews’ Kenickie was a standout theatrical performance. From his aviator sunglasses, to his permanently set smirk, he oozes looking cool and unbothered, while also highlighting the effort Kenickie puts into the effortless. Isabella Gustitus, as Rizzo, stunned in all the same ways as Crews, very successfully playing cool girl, yet also able to tap into Rizzo’s emotional vulnerability during vocally impressive musical number ‘There Are Worse Things I Could Do’. 

The standout musical moment of the show for me was Marco Gil Harris’ (Doody’s) rendition of ‘Those Magic Changes’. He begins the number fumbling with the guitar strings, with bashful assurances that he can only really play a C chord, as he launches into an amazingly sung musical number. The ensemble drew around him, ladies swooning at his confidence and musicality. The song’s refrain circled around my head as I walked home. 

The cast was definitely performing to a sympathetic audience, full of friends and family (climbing to one’s seat involved attempting not to squash numerous bouquets of roses). Every musical number was punctuated by whoops and cheers, and every joke given perhaps more than its fair share of hearty laughs. However, this made for a friendly atmosphere, which encouraged me to just sit back and hum along to the cast’s well-sung renditions of all of the songs I already knew and loved, and enjoy the familiar and charmingly outdated Grease storyline.

Photo by St Andrews Students' Association