View from the Green Room: Let’s face the music and dance
Holly Coogan (Sandy) and Sam Marsden (Danny Zuko) at An Evening With Soul Dance Arts at the Theatre Royal during their production of Grease. Photo: Joe Evans
Jack Cunningham’s Soul Dance Arts stage school showcased the young talents of its performance school with a very entertaining show that rocketed along for two hours on The Mall last Sunday night.
It was an interesting and really varied programme with first half scenes and numbers from Grease that everyone knows and a “Variety Spectacular” second half that danced the evening away with numbers that everyone recognizes and some less known ones as well.
Grease was certainly the word with standout performances from Sam Marsden as super cool greaser Danny Zuco and Holly Coogan as the loveably gauche Sandy, the Australian transfer student, and their duets radiated young love on a bitterly cold night.
The T-Birds greaser gang are well cast. Doody (Tadhg Gilbert Foley), Sonny (Daniel Andrews), Roger (James Farrell Smith) and his best friend Kenickie (Alex Brophy) are shoulder-shrugin’, cuff-shootin’, gang-grimicin’ teens that just can’t wait to leave their high school years behind them. Their greaser-groupie Pink Ladies pals are more than a match.
Rizzo (Sophie Reynolds), Marty (Emma Nathan), Frenchy (Bronagh Steenson), Jan (Chloe Byrne), are fun and feisty teens that dream about boys… and boys… boys… and clothes. The spirit between the two gangs is the dynamic that drives the show on.
There are some smashing cameos from Layla Roche Caulfied as nerdy Patty Simcox, who pops up everywhere; the dreaded Mrs Lynch (Uwa Omusi), everyone’s DJ Vince Fontaine (Niall Broderick), nerdy Eugene (Charlie Barrett) and super dance trooper Cha Cha Di Gregorio (Katie Penkert).
Grease is really a show of soulful ballads mixed with some great up tempo dance numbers that lift the show and has the audience buzzin’. The Rydell High cheerleaders scene is a colourful razzmatazz of Americana, while the Born To Jive and We Go Together dance routines would make a deaf man in a coma jump up and jive.
I loved the opening James Bond routine for Act Two from Senior Intensive Dance. The guitar riff and the smoking gun routine was full of danger with assassins dressed in Blues Bros gear just waiting to click into 'licensed to kill' mode. Contemporary Dance’s Skyfall was just the perfect ending to this sequence.
All Soul Dance Arts dancing troupes and singers got to perform. Mia Dunphy’s Goodnight My Someone from Music Man brought back memories of a De La Salle Musical Society when I played the Music Man and Alanna Geraghty and Rachel Nathan’s duet on Home was rather special. It was great to hear Quinn Donnelly duet with Charli Hearne on Home, while Faye Mackey’s Good Girl Winnie Foster from recent musical Tuck Everlasting was a big hit on the night.
Junior groups gave it socks with Murder on the Dance Floor, Shut Up and Raise Your Glass, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Let’s Face the Music and Dance. Senior’s had some pretty complicated routines with Hot Honey Rag, Love Runs Out and Throwback Love and the whole house rocked to a hurricane of noise in Roar.
A good night on The Mall.
