Stage Review - Grease (Tacoma Musical Playhouse)

Stage Review - Grease
Presented By: Tacoma Musical Playhouse - Tacoma , WA
Show Run: May 09 - June 01, 2025
Date Reviewed: Friday, May 09, 2025 (Opening Night)
Run Time: 2 Hours, 30 Minutes (including a 15 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman

Few titles come with as much nostalgia, at least for me, as Grease. Grease is, in fact, the word, it does have groove and it does have meaning, and for many of us that meaning comes from the 1978 film version of the musical starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. In fact, it wasn’t until much later that I learned the stage musical came first, seven years earlier in fact, in 1971. Even the film, though, I didn’t discover until later, but when I did, I dove in with both feet. Grease was the first thing I recorded on our family’s brand new VCR when we finally got one in the 1980s, and I watched it over and over and over again, until I knew every word and every song by heart. And in learning about the stage musical, a whole new world opened up, one that availed itself of some pretty interesting trivia, and a fun comparison of the two versions, which aren’t altogether too different, but different enough. I feel like a lot of people come into the stage version expecting the film, since that’s their frame of reference, and I felt that at the opening night performance of Grease, the Musical at Tacoma Musical Playhouse this past Friday. I recall folks around me listing off the songs they had heard by intermission, and then talking about which ones they hadn’t heard yet, and referencing them in the context of the actors who portrayed certain roles in the movie. And while the stage version doesn’t have Sha Na Na or a Sandy with an Australian accent (though it would have been funny if director Jon Douglas Rake had cast Emma DeLoye as Sandy here, since she recently played another Olivia Newton-John character, Kira in the TMP production of Xanadu, but that’s ok, Emma’s role in Grease is a good one, and Jon has a Sandy that does pretty well for herself, but more on that later), the versions are similar enough in their musical content that nobody should be disappointed. The TMP version, directed and co-choreographed by Jon, along with Christina Naficy, is full of nostalgia and full of fun musical performances that should leave most audiences smiling.

This version features Christian Bolduc and Allyson Jacobs-Lake as Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski, the high school seniors who have just spent the summer together at the beach before unexpectedly running into each other at Rydell High when school starts in the fall. On the first day of school, when Danny is telling his fellow greaser T-Birds about his summer, and Sandy is telling the Pink Ladies about hers, through the song “Summer Nights”, it isn’t long before they all realize that the two are talking about the other, which leads to the groups forcing the couple together. Shocked to see Sandy, Danny, wanting to appear cool, acts like he doesn’t even recognize Sandy, while she is clearly and unapologetically excited. Theirs is the primary story arc, of course, and most know the story of their on-again, off-again romance, until finally Sandy has had enough of being considered the “goody two shoes” Sandra Dee, and calls Beauty School Dropout Frenchie over for that famous makeover. There are a number of parallel storylines, of course, there’s Vince Fontaine and his bandstand show broadcasting live from Rydell, and his, um, inappropriate advances toward the flirty Marty, there’s Rizzo and Kenicke, though there’s no “hickey from Kenicke” here, but there is Cha-Cha Digregorio and her taking the Hand Jive dance contest by storm with Danny. All of these storylines are presented with an overall theme that is inspired by the 1950s, including music and songs from that era written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. After the movie, and its popular “Hopelessly Devoted to You”, written by John Farrar, that song has been included in many stage versions, and it is here as well, though its placement varies from show to show.

I generally enjoyed opening night of Grease, though I found it to be a bit rough around the edges. Whether it was because of opening night jitters, or some other reason, there were certain aspects of Friday’s performance that just weren’t as clean as I’m sure this creative team would have liked. The first example was during “Summer Nights”, (the group duet, T-Birds on one side of the stage and Pink Ladies on the other, backing up Danny and Sandy vocally), when the ensemble was in full voice, the audience wasn’t able to hear Christian and Allyson sing their individual lines. Vocal balance in a number like this is imperative so that the ensemble comes through with good volume, but it’s even more important that the leads be heard over them. Volume was also an issue during “Greased Lightning”, where it felt like the choreography got in the way, meaning that sometimes if there is too much movement in a song, and the performers are thinking about their steps while singing, neither are going to look natural. And that’s another thing I noticed on opening night, that not all of the dancers looked completely confident in their moves, and that hesitancy is usually because either the steps are too complicated or the group isn’t prepared enough to be sure of what they’re doing on stage. These minor things, along with some missed queues between actors and the live orchestra, I’m sure will get tighter and cleaned up as the run progresses, and while the actors portray their characters very well and perform the musical numbers with a decent amount of flair and vocal ability, it’s in the connective tissue of the production where perhaps some time for steeping will result in some improvement.

Getting past those issues, it’s a show with a lot of quality. Take “Summer Nights” for instance. I love the way this is staged, and frankly the way set designers Jon Douglas Rake and Dennis Kurtz have laid this all out provides a nice canvas for each of the musical numbers, usually involving rolling out set pieces specific to each song downstage from the largesse set, itself resembling a living 1950s jukebox in all of its coral, pink, and purple glory. For this first big ensemble piece, a set of bleachers to stage right and a cafeteria table to stage left are where the T-Birds and Pink Ladies gather to hear Danny’s and Sandy’s recollections of the summer. This layout captures the essence of the scene, and with John Chenault’s lighting focusing on whomever is doing the particular recounting at any one time, and the other actors freezing mid motion in shadow, it creates quite a nice picture, and at the same time acts as a foreshadow for some of the other group numbers later in the program. And while, yes, the voices of the leads do get lost in volume of the ensemble, part of that is because of the strength of that group, and the full voices and strong harmonies that they bring. There’s a bit at the end of “Summer Nights”, though, when it slows, and the ensemble backs away, leaving only Danny and Sandy to sing, it’s at this moment when I wished I could have heard the lead’s voices through the whole song, because not only do Christian and Allyson sound solid on their own, together they sound superb. The only other time the audience gets to hear them together, really, is during the finale, the big closing number “You’re the One That I Want”, and of course they nail that, along with the ensemble that in all honesty never feels like it crowds the stage, even though it’s a big group.

Individually, the pair are excellent in their roles as well. Christian plays the Danny as tough, but flustered when he sees Sandy, sort of caught between two worlds, which he is, and he’s got the perfect body type to be convincing as the tough guy who joins the track team, too, thereby meeting all of the requirements to play Danny Zuko. But beyond just the base requirements, Christian brings a his vocal talent, which is highlighted in “Sandy” and his ability as a dancer with Coral Horton as Cha-Cha Digregorio in “Born to Hand Jive”. He’s a triple threat here truly, and he’s simply an excellent Danny, just as Allyson is a wonderful Sandy. Allyson’s Sandy is the sweet, naive new girl who doesn’t quite fit in with the Pink Ladies, who adores Danny, at least the Danny that she met over the summer. Anyone familiar with the story knows how Sandy is a Jekyll and Hyde role and, regardless of the opinion some have that telling a story about a woman who feels she needs to change in order to “get a man” is in poor taste, it requires someone to be believable as both the sweet Sandra Dee as well as the leather clad Sandy, and Allyson hits the target with both. By the way, I will say that Sandy’s transformation isn’t the only one here, and to say that she “changes to get a man” is a simplistic way of looking at it. For me, both she and Danny evolve in this story, shedding the image that they’ve been portraying up to this point, and learning to become comfortable not just with who they are, but in expressing it. And as far as Allyson’s overall performance, it’s very good. There’s only one element which I’m a bit uncomfortable with, and that’s the placement of “Hopelessly Devoted”. While it’s sung well, first off, it clearly feels shoehorned in, and secondly, the lyrics are inconsistent with where Sandy is in the story. There is some flexibility around where this can be placed in the show, and having Sandy sing this song after Danny does something to hurt her, rather than the other way around, would be more apropos.

There are so many good characters in Grease, and here in this production, they’ve all been cast extremely well, most of them getting a chance to feature vocally as well. Jesse Geray continues to impress, this time as T-Bird Doody and in his rendition of one of my favorites, “Those Magic Changes”. He’s backed up by the ensemble cleverly as they sing their actual notes instead of words. There’s also Joseph Flores as Roger, or “Rump”, the “King of the Mooners”, performing a wonderful duet with Pink Lady Jan, played by Cori De Verse, Erika LeBlanc as the popular, vivacious, and bubbly cheerleader Patty Simcox in what I feel is one of more memorable performances from a comic angle, usually paired on stage with Clarence Williams’ Eugene Florczyk, and the absolutely wonderful Sharry O’Hare as Miss Lynch, everyone’s least favorite English teacher. Other memorable performances include Claire Bowder as the flirty Marty whose performance of “Freddy My Love” is very good and who is the object of Vince Fontaine’s inappropriate advances, Fontaine played by Thomas Morisada, and Braeden Linkenback’s Kinickie, who does a really nice job in leading the T-Birds gang.

Two standouts, though, come from performances that had a high bar to meet coming into the show. For those of us who love the film especially, it’s hard to replicated how Stockard Channing plays Rizzo, but here, Victoria Knight comes pretty close. Her portrayal of the troubled and conflicted coming of age teenage girl is excellent, but even better are her vocal performances, first in the mocking “Look at Me I’m Sandra Dee”, and later in the wonderful “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”. I adore Victoria’s version of this song, and overall really like her Rizzo. Then, in what is, for me, the one true show-stopping number, Anden Leo brings down the house as the Teen Angel (Frankie Avalon’s character from the movie) singing to Emma DeLoye’s Frenchie in “Beauty School Dropout”. This number is fun, it’s entertaining, JullesM’s costumes are fantastic, and Anden proves that he is a showman in the energy he brings to this.

There’s a lot of nostalgia around Grease, the stage musical and the film based on it, and regardless of how anyone was introduced to it, most likely when they hear its songs, or even just the names Danny, Sandy, Rizzo or Frenchie, there’s a good chance they will be swept right back into the past, and to the memories of a simpler time. The Tacoma Musical Playhouse version of Grease captures all of that nostalgia and then some, from its design that reflects the style and color scheme of the 1950s, the costumes that are reminiscent of the film and musical, and to the musical numbers that sound like they were plucked straight from the Hit Parade, it’s everything a fan could hope for. And though the production itself still feels a bit rough around the edges, with time that should improve, and in no way do any of its shortcomings take away from the quality of the show’s performances and musical numbers. Grease, at the end of the day, is a fun and entertaining musical experience.

Grease runs on stage at Tacoma Musical Playhouse through June 1. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.tmp.org/.

Photo credit: Dennis Kurtz