This isn’t a sponsored post.
BrumHour was invited to experience Secret Cinema by The Relationship.
By Dave Massey twitter.com/brumhour
This production contains audience participation.
Review: Secret Cinema: Grease The Live Experience
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐”A fantastic time travelling trip back to the 1950s”
Grease is the hit film about Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) and her unconventional romance with Danny Zucko (John Travolta) and swiftly follows almost a year in their life through senior year of high school.
Thursday 6pm: Secret Cinema has landed as a huge live experience with Grease at The NEC and featuring Rydell High’s sports field as the setting, it is a fully realised world. From themed food to purchase to games to play, carnival rides to enjoy and the opportunity to dress up/cosplay as the different characters from the film.
Many of the attendees had dressed up in film-themed clothing and it was amusing trying to work out the actors vs the public at some moments.
I grabbed myself a Curry Hotdog – I am a proper Brummie after all, it was £10, and a bleacher (bench seating) to park my arse and then just soaked up the atmosphere. There is beer and other adult beverages available to purchase (I was given drinks vouchers and had San Miguel), and soft drinks are available too.
Then there are several wonderful live performances before the 8pm film itself including; Summer Nights and Greased Lightnin’, which make full use of the space, plus during the film, the live cast appear on the set to recreate moments from the film live. Fantastic, and the film looked stunning on the big screen.
I’ve seen the film Grease hundreds of times and the stage version a few times also, this was a chance to merge those two things together. Arriving in the experience performers are playing the roles from the film, fully in character, and with a loose interactive script to keep to. Patty, who is desperate to be class president is on hand with organised games and Principal McGee has her megaphone to scold badly behaved students.
My only nitpick is the arrival experience, Secret Cinema is well signposted, but arriving twenty minutes ahead of the start time meant there was no real sense of theatrics until ticket check in. You become very aware you are standing in a car park by the recycling bins. The site itself felt totally silent right up until 6pm. Trivial yes, and minor.
Secret Cinema: Grease the Live Experience is a fantastic time travelling trip back to the 1950s and jam-packed full of nostalgia with the fun high school world of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies. This experience plus film is at The NEC until 13th August 2023. Book tickets here: secretcinema.com/en_GB/shows/grease.
