Theatre reviews: Grease | The Haunting of Alice Gilfrey

The Pitlochry Festival Theatre ensemble provide rebellious energy by the truckload in their new production of Grease, writes Joyce McMillan

Grease, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★

The Haunting Of Agnes Gilfrey, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★

Youth’s a stuff will not endure, says Shakespeare; but in the age of the tribute musical, it can be endlessly recaptured, and made to live again on stage. Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s 1971 show Grease – later transformed into the 1978 global hit film – is a tribute musical in the true sense. Set in the autumn of 1959, it is one of the original high school musicals, and its much-loved songs – Summer Nights, We Go Together, You’re The One That I Want, and many more – are all lovingly crafted in the bubble-gum pop style of the late Fifties.

Grease at Pitlochry Festival Theatre PIC: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

To work well, though, a show like Grease needs a company who are themselves full of the rebellious energy and sheer joie de vivre of youth; and that’s what the 2025 Pitlochry ensemble provides by the truckload, in the opening production of this year’s main stage summer season.

Co-produced with the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, Sam Hardie’s Pitlochry-made production has already played a two-week run there; so the version that opened at Pitlochry over the weekend is already warmed up to sizzling-point. Working in the instruments-in-hand style perfected by Pitlochry musical director Richard Reeday, the 17-strong cast offer a sparkling display of quadruple-threat theatrical energy, as they act, sing, dance and play their way through the story of good girl Sandy, her beau Danny Zuko, and the Rydell High School gang who surround them.

What makes the show a roaring success, though – despite the occasional rough edge and under-powered moment – is not only that energy, but the sheer underlying professionalism they bring to the task of making the story work, as a fast-moving two hours of theatre, plus interval. Blythe Jandoo is a beautiful, poignant Sandy, and Alexander Service a palpably decent Danny, with Tyler Collins and Fiona Wood fairly knocking the pinball out of the arcade as rough kids Kenickie and Rizzo.

In the end, though, it’s all about the ensemble, and the terrific collective spirit expressed through the big-number songs, and through Kally Lloyd-Jones’s joyful choreography; and when they reach the final triumphant chorus of You’re The One That I Want, the Pitlochry audience can hardly wait to leap to their feet and join in the jive, in one of those glorious celebrations of youth that never grows old.

Manasa Tagica and Sarah McCardie in The Haunting of Alice Gilfrey at Oran Mor PIC: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Youth’s a stuff that can’t be recaptured, though, for the central character in the latest Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime drama, co-produced with Mull Theatre. In The Haunting Of Agnes Gilfrey, by Glasgow based writer-performer Amy Conway, the central character Agnes is an outspoken Glasgow woman in her forties who loves her job in the film industry, but has recently fallen in love with, and married, a slightly younger man, an American actor called Jimmy, who is eager to become a Dad.

The pair are therefore undergoing fertility treatment, so far with no success; and when they arrive for a romantic break at a holiday-let castle on Mull – and encounter the very strange housekeeper, Mrs Carlin – Agnes soon begins to feel haunted by the unhappy spirit of a former lady of the house, whose sombre portrait hangs over the fireplace.

The play perhaps spends a little too much time setting up this situation, and referencing various horror-movie tropes, before Agnes’s story finally moves towards its crisis.

The point it wants to make, though – about patriarchal pressure on women to have children, and on how even the nicest, funniest men can be complicit with it – is a powerful one. And in Katie Slater’s production, Mary Gapinski, Manasa Tagica, and a poignant and hilarious Sarah McCardie as Agnes, make a fine job of exploring the tough moment of choice she faces; as she learns to embrace her own inner cailleach, or crone, and her right to grow older, without shame or regret.

​Grease is in repertoire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 27 September. The Haunting of Agnes Gilfrey is at Mull Theatre, An Tobar, Tobermory, 25-27 September.