Review: ANCIENT GREASE at The Vaults

Lucy Penrose was the stand-out, playing the goddess Aphrodite who is essentially a version of Grease's Rizzo. Penrose has played actual Rizzo at the immersive open air production of the show, and her familiarity with the character, hugely enhances her performance. She is also in possession of a fine singing voice, a gloriously deadpan face, and an hilarious ability to improvise when interacting with audience members. Penrose’s ad-libs were some of the funniest parts of the show.

Other excellent performances came from skilled belter Grace Kelly Miller as Atropos, Peter Camilleri as an obnoxious, dim-witted, Danny-Zucko-inspored Zeus, and Christopher Patten-Walker in two varying roles as macho Ares and camp Lachesis. If all these Greek names sound baffling, don’t worry — you hardly need to have a degree in Classics to appreciate Ancient Grease, and if your only familiarity with the musical its based on singing along to the medley at a wedding, you’ll still get the vibe of the parody.

Plot doesn’t matter much in a show like this, but it’s essentially a version of the musical, with the action transplanted to ancient Greece (Philippa Leadbetter’s Sandy, however, still has a heavy Aussie accent a la Olivia Newton-John, which to be honest was more grating than giggle-worthy). It’s all intentionally ridiculous, but evidently done with an affection for the original Grease, and of musicals in-general.

Staged in a small venue, the show is limited in space and spectacular resources, but Director Dan Wye creates impressive stage effects. There are many surprises and visual jokes in the show, and one particular reveal had audiences gasping with surprise and delight. Clancy Flinn goes for a more-is-more approach to lighting design, which he gets away with given the maximalist silliness of the show. On the other hand, the sound design needs serious improvement, as the vocals got lost in the mix many times, leaving the songs’ lyrics unclear. The backing track used for songs was also not at the standard of the cast’s vocals. The songs, by the way, aren’t side-splitting, but work perfectly fine as send-ups of Grease’s originals.

Ancient Grease’s jokes can be hit-and-miss, especially if you don’t have huge amounts of patience for bawdy humour, though I felt that more gags landed than flopped. The show over-ran on press night (an hour for the second act was unnecessary), which reduced some of the audience’s goodwill by the end. However, it’s a light-hearted, marvellously silly evening for fans of this type of show and even sceptics like me may find themselves guffawing as the join in with a hand jive.