Grease
It's electrifying: the 50s-set, five-decade-old show has scored a brand-new stage production, and it's rolling into Brisbane from January 2024.
Overview
Brisbanites, prepare to get hopelessly devoted — again — to Rydell High, summer lovers reuniting at school, leather jackets and Pink Ladies. Because giving Grease a prequel streaming series in 2023 wasn't enough, the 50s-set musical is returning to its original home, with Australia's brand-new multimillion-dollar theatre production of the five-decade-old show set to be the one that Brissie audiences want from Saturday, January 4, 2025.
Grease is shaping up to be the River City's big electrifying summer hit, zipping into the Queensland capital's QPAC like lightening. This will be the fourth stop on the show's current Aussie tour, with the production playing Melbourne, Sydney and Perth before arriving in Brisbane.
Everyone knows Grease's plot by now, given how popular the 1978 movie adaptation of the musical rom-com still is, especially Down Under. It is about an Australian transfer student, after all, who falls in love with an American high schooler in California. After it sped from the stage to become a silver-screen classic, it spawned a 1982 Michelle Pfeiffer (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania)-starring sequel, too, then last year's Paramount+ show Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.
Cast-wise, exactly who'll be slipping into John Travolta (Paradise City) and the late, great Olivia Newton-John's (The Very Excellent Mr Crocodile Dundee) leathers as Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson in Brisbane hasn't been announced, and neither has the rest of the talent taking to the stage. Down south, Joseph Spanti (Friends! The Musical Parody, Cruel Intentions: The 90s Musical) and Annelise Hall (The Marvellous Elephant Man, Aspects of Love) have been leading the show, while Patti Newton has been playing Miss Lynch, Jay Laga'aia has been featuring as Vince Fontaine and Marcia Hines has been popping up as Teen Angel.
Whoever plays T-Birds and Pink Ladies in Brissie will obviously be belting out all the famous tunes — including the titular 'Grease' and fellow earworms 'Summer Nights', 'Sandy', 'Hopelessly Devoted to You', 'You're The One That I Want', 'Greased Lightnin' and 'Beauty School Dropout'.
Images: Jeff Busby.
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