Grease at Pitlochry Festival Theatre – review

Grease is one of those shows that you feel you’ve always known; mostly, of course, thanks to the 1978 movie. The songs are so ubiquitous that they’ve generated their own chart-topping megamix and have filled school disco floors for decades.

But nostalgia has always been central to its appeal. When the show was written in 1972, it was already harking back to a lost era of late-1950s America, when life was less complicated and it was clear who the good guys were. The masterstroke of Sam Hardie’s production for the Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season is to lean into that nostalgia and make it a core part of the audience experience.

That comes partly through the visuals, which are marvellously low-key. Nick Trueman’s set designs are beautifully simple, turning spareness into a virtue. The cardboard box set for the Burger Palace is a particular treat, though it feels like cheating to use actual cardboard boxes for the house party scene. The costumes, too, are simplistically retro – you get the strong feeling you could recreate them by rifling through the back of your parents’ wardrobe – and even the ensemble dances give off the air of something you could fairly easily copy in your bedroom mirror.

This makes the whole production feel homely and familiar, like the triumphant school play you always wish you’d been in, and it feeds into the performances, too. Nowhere is the nostalgic element more focused than in watching adults pretending to be teenagers a decade younger than themselves, and it works because it’s done with such charm and always with a knowing wink. That’s particularly true for the T-Birds, where every hair slick or pelvic thrust is executed with ebullient silliness (Sonny’s hairdo is worth the price of admission alone), but the Pink Ladies are just as gauche and wryly self-aware.

Blythe Jandoo, a Pitlochry regular, is great as Sandy, singing a lovely “Hopelessly Devoted”, and suggesting that her climactic transformation isn’t quite as sincere as it might appear. Alexander Service matches her well as Danny, slightly challenged in the higher writing of “You’re the One That I Want”, but singing “Sandy” with oodles of teenage angst. Tyler Collins doesn’t quite have the devil-may-care swagger of Kenickie, but the rest of the T-Birds are a treat, and there’s as much humour as heart in the Pink Ladies. Fiona Wood plays Rizzo with gutsy assertiveness, and there’s as much sympathy as humour in April Nerissa Hudson’s Frenchie and Leah Jamieson’s Jan.

The other smaller roles are all beautifully observed, and when you throw in the fact that the actors all play the instruments, which is something of a Pitlochry speciality, you’ve got a tremendously fun evening; one that might not be particularly flashy, but which will nevertheless warm your heart