[Lanark]

Why is anyone surprised that Grease is simply commercial crap, a cheap and shoddy production brought in by producers who wouldn't know good new material if it hit them between the eyes but know how to play the TV audience for suckers? Fact is it was a rotten movies to start with, cheap, shoddy sets, saved by a couple of good songs, John Travolta in the days when he had a waistline and could do an Elvis, the oldest teenager in the history of American film, Stockard Channing, and a cameo by Eve Arden, the Alison Janney of the day. None of the stage version have attempted more than to copy the film so tat becomes tattier. This latest one is not helped by its two TV leads, a boy lacking in charisma - his appearance in shorts is embarassing - and a leading lady who is simply pudgy and manages to be even less sexy in the black cat suit than was Olivia Newton John, and that is saying something. A decent director trying to use the film as a spring board would have taken one look at little Miss Puppy Fat and come up with a different costume to suggest that Sandy had hidden fires. It may introduce new people to the theatre -half of Essex was there the night I went and most of them clearly had not been inside a theatre before. But what a sad introduction to a world of magic and imagination.