Grease: 44 recommendations
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Grease, Britain’s favourite musical*, actually started life as a serious play with prominent incidental music in Chicago in 1971, dealing with issues such as gang violence and teenage pregnancy.
After it was suggested to the writers Jim Jacobs and Robert Casey that the show would be better received as a full-scale musical, its hugely increased success resulted in a 1972 Broadway transfer, and it played a record breaking 3,388 performance run.
The original London production opened at the New London Theatre in 1973, starring Elaine Paige and an unknown Richard Gere as Sandy and Danny but the run was not a success and closed after only a few months.
The concept of Grease really reached out with the phenomenal 1978 film, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John immortalising Danny and Sandy. A few changes were made for the film, with musical numbers being shifted about and four entirely new songs being written especially for it: ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’, ‘Sandy’, ‘You’re The One That I Want’ and the title song.
To coincide with the film’s UK release, Grease the show was revived at the London Astoria in 1979 and embarked on a UK tour starring Tracey Ullman and Su Pollard.
Grease has enjoyed numerous revivals in the UK, the most successful yet running for six years between 1993 and 1999 at the Dominion and Cambridge theatres, in a production splicing the original stage format and ideas from the film, using the four songs originally missing from the show, but keeping the stage production’s structure.
Productions of Grease regularly tour internationally, most recently an Asian tour which began in October 2007.
This, the most recent revival, took its two leads from the nationwide talent search Grease Is The Word, won by Danny Bayne and Susan McFadden, just as Broadway’s parallel production plucked winners from NBC’s Grease: You’re The One That I Want.
The Piccadilly Theatre’s production, directed by David Gilmore and choreographed by Arlene Philips not only showcases the country’s favourite Danny and Sandy, but still has all the energy and vibrancy that keeps the appeal of Grease alive.
*In polls carried out by Channel 4 and the Wales Millennium Centre.
