This Grease immersive show isn’t the one that I want
Grease: immersive musical review: ★★
A Titanic experience where you’re aboard the ship as it sinks, the heavily-mocked Elvis show (that I actually loved), a new Traitors experience and similar ones for Squid Game and Friends. Whatever you want to call them, experiences or immersive theatre (categorising these experiences has instigated a fierce debate raging within the industry) the capital is experiencing (pardon the pun) an explosion of shows that aren’t on traditional stages. The latest sees immersive theatre originators Secret Cinema return after a three-year break to stage a rather sparse version of classic 1978 musical rom-com, Grease.
There are odd moments of magic. During the finale Danny and Sandy ride the fairground rides stationed in Battersea Park, which doubles as Rydell High School from the film, but the handful of playfully transportative moments are outweighed by the large scale of this production, which crams in 2,500 people per show into a huge building that feels like an aircraft hanger.
Grease: immersive show lacks intimacy
Most of the cutesy interactions you’d hope for are lost. There’s barely any meeting between actors and punters, and when people are pulled up on stage, the space is so big you can hardly see unless you’re standing nearby. This issue is true at large: set pieces timed to enter the space to recreate scenes from the film (which is shown on big screens) are lost into the void. You’re encouraged to take breaks from watching the movie and wander around the high school set, but there are scarce few rooms or set details to explore that bring you inside the world of Sandy and Danny. The timing is also out on the big screen so the words don’t match up with the actors.
It isn’t a totally unworthy spectacle: the film screens at least are big enough and high-definition enough that they themselves make an impact, and ironically there is something camply theatrical about the scope of the whole event: you get the impression Danny Zuko would like nothing more than to be standing up there in front of a stadium-sized audience. There are clearly issues turning profits from immersive theatre, but large-scale shows must retain the quality. Grease The Immersive Movie Musical (grating name, by the way) was never really supposed to be Oasis.
Grease The Immersive Movie Musical is playing until 7 September; greasetheimmersivemoviemusical.com