Grease is the word!

One of the great things about growing up in the UK is that it has a fantastic history of musical theatre. Although there were less opportunities in Glasgow, some of the travelling musical productions would make their way up to Glasgow or Edinburgh. And of course, you could always pop down to London for a quick trip and catch some musicals or plays while you were down there.

Incidentally, musicals are also one of the things I miss most about the UK since I came to HK. Admittedly, some of the musicals do make their way to HK on occasion. The problem is that tickets generally tend to be prohibitively expensive. For example, when Phantom came to HK, good tickets were priced at well over the HK$1,000 range. Considering the relative price of other things in HK, that's pretty steep for 2 hours worth of entertainment.

All of which made me pretty happy when I noticed that Grease had come to HK and that good tickets "only" cost in the HK$600+ range. Although still expensive, it was a cost I could justify.

The show itself is very well done and really manages to capture the feel and energy of the movie. All the old classics from the movie are here although the songs are spread around the cast instead of being primarily sung by Danny Zuko. Understandable otherwise they may have had trouble finding actors willing to take on those roles.

One of the best things about the show though is how funny it is. You can tell the producers went out of their way to make this a funny show. The producers have also done a great job in realising that most people watching this on stage will have already seen the movie and be very familiar with the songs and stories. To ensure that the show remains interesting throughout, there are a couple of set pieces which play very cleverly on the audiences expectations of what would happen next based on the movie.

All in all, this was a fun show. The only downside was that the theatre they used in Hong Kong wasn't great as the seats were a bit cramped. Still, considering how long since I've seen a musical on stage, it was well worth the slight discomfort.