Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical review – party like it’s 1959 | Theatre

There’s no secret about what’s happening in Battersea Park: the signs are quite literally there at the entrance, welcoming you to Rydell High School. You can even spot the real-life ferris wheel that hints at the fairground finale to come. Grease isn’t the first musical to be given Secret Cinema’s signature immersive treatment – there was a Moulin Rouge in 2017 – but it is the most ambitious, with a live cast performing all of its memorable numbers in what is essentially a hybrid show.

Faithful rendering … Stephanie Costi as Sandy, Liam Morris as Danny. Photograph: Piers Allardyce/Shutterstock

The original movie plays on overhead screens, with occasional footage intercut from a black-and-white stage feed, and a (fabulous) band provides the live soundtrack. It takes a chaotic quarter-hour to get your head around what you’re watching. The actors aren’t lip-syncing their lines, so if you’re following the screen it looks like clunky dubbing. The dialogue regularly gets lost behind the music: perhaps the sound mix will get better over the course of the run. Perhaps it’s not important – this is, ultimately, a full-costume karaoke night, the chance for folk to belt out Hopelessly Devoted to You and Greased Lightnin’ without any fear of being removed by an usher.

As for the 30-strong cast, none of them would shame the West End. Stephanie Costi is a sweetly voiced Sandy, while Lucy Penrose reconfirms that Rizzo is easily the show’s most compelling character. Some of the performances feel impressionistic, and Jennifer Weber’s choreography riffs only gently on the original, but you wouldn’t expect anything else of a production dedicated to the faithful rendering of the movie’s world. Matt Costain’s direction does spring a couple of genuine surprises; it also co-opts those who have paid for VIP tickets as willing extras.

The charismatic Waylon Jacobs provides a linchpin role, transforming the film version’s narcissistic TV presenter Vince Fontaine into an all-purpose MC and entertainment director. He leads the crowd in conga lines around Tom Rogers’ meticulous sets, from the Frosty Palace that serves up real ice cream sundaes to the gym floor where the audience can join in the iconic dance contest. And that, after all, is what people have come for: to party like it’s 1959. So what if the movie’s climax is better on screen than it is in the room?

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