When the musical Grease, with book, music, and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, made its Broadway debut in 1972, it played through 1980, became the longest running show at the time in Broadway history, and was adapted for the big screen by Allan Carr, from a screenplay by Bronté Woodard. Released by Paramount Pictures in 1978, the movie adaptation – starring John Travolta as Rydell High School’s 1950s bad-boy greaser Danny and Olivia Newton-John as the newly relocated good girl Sandy – was also a record-breaking hit, then becoming the highest-grossing musical film to date. Its fame and popularity have persisted, with two Broadway revivals in 1994 and 2007, and the new musical send-up it inspired, Vape! The Grease Parody, by Catie Hogan and Sketchworks Comedy, with lyrics and additional book by Billy Recce and Danny Salles, and Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley Jackson serving as creative consultants.
Following its 2018 premiere in Atlanta, Vape! was scheduled for a run in NYC in 2019, but ten days before the first performance, Sketchworks was served with a cease-and-desist letter for alleged copyright infringement, to which the comedy company responded with a lawsuit, claiming the parody was protected under fair use. After winning the two-and-a-half-year legal battle, Vape! made its long-awaited return to NYC earlier this year for a one-night-only concert at Town Hall and is now playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at Theater 555. If you love to laugh, it’s “the one that [you] want” to see!
Directed by Jack Plotnick with rapid-fire pacing and non-stop hilarity, the over-the-top spoof of navigating high-school cliques, peer pressure, romance, and self-identity is here reset from the mid-century to the present, though the familiar characters and their situations remain rooted in those of the ‘70s original. But now the T-Birds are the T-Bros, the Pink Ladies are the Pink Squad, they’re posting on TikTok, using dating apps, driving a Prius, and vaping, not smoking (one of the funniest sight gags is the sweet and innocent Sandy, transformed into a bad girl to win over Danny – who, in keeping with the current setting, insists on saying “I ❤️you” instead of “I love you” – dropping the vape pen and stamping it out with her foot, as if it were a cigarette).
Leading the riotously funny all-in cast are Scott Silagy as Danny and Lara Strong as Sandy, each lovingly lampooning their characters with spot-on comic timing and stellar vocals. Strong, a native of New Zealand, nails Newton-John’s accent, Sandy’s outsider demeanor, and clueless inability to figure out what she’s doing there, and Silagy has the hot moves of Travolta (choreography by Ashley Marinelli). And both slyly reference the iconic characters played by the film’s stars in other shows (including Saturday Night Fever and Xanadu) and snippets of the hit songs for which they’re known, as well as shining a spotlight on the dated sexist theme of her forsaking her own identity and changing into a female version of him to capture his egocentric love, with nearly identical stylings and – SPOILER ALERT! – telling S&M harnesses (costumes, hair, wigs, and make-up by Matthew Solomon), which is only one of the many sexual innuendos that have been inserted into the updated parody.
The featured cast – Ryan Avoux as Kenickie, Dante Brattelli as Sonny, Slee as the tough as nails Rizzo, Meg Guiney as Marty, Kristen Amanda Smith as Frenchy, Jen Clark as Jan, and Katie Kallaus as Teen Angel – is equally adept at poking fun at their characters, questioning their actual ages (the actors are all much older than high-school teens, as they were in the film) and sexual identities (there’s drag, and between-bros attraction), switching to other multiple roles, and delivering the well-known songs, with the same melodies as the originals (music supervision and arrangements by Lena Gabrielle), but here with new satirical lyrics that suit the present-day version and add to the no-holds-barred fun. Unfortunately, the sound (by Daniel Lundberg) wasn’t always clear (I was seated in the fourth row at the right) and many of the jokes were missed as a result of that, and of the roaring laughter of the audience.
An eye-catching and amusing artistic design supports the shift from the ‘50s to now and the allusions to the ‘70s, when both the musical and the film originated. The set (by David Goldstein) identifies the time and place – enhanced with colorful lighting (by Zach Pizza) and mood shifts from light to dark – with proscenium signs (and an emphasis on “HIGH” school and clouds of vape), a pair of three-level bleacher seats, and a full-scale upstage projection screen, which also cleverly translates the intended meaning of the guys’ expressive back-and-forth “Bro. Bro! Bro . . . Bro.” Props (by Brendan McCann), from the vape pens to the knife one of them wields to the Muppet-style Patty, help to define the characters, as do the costumes (by Solomon), which recall the leather jackets and pink jackets of the ‘50s, but with post-modern updates to newer types of jeans and glitter sneakers.
While it helps to have a thorough knowledge of Grease, the careers of Travolta and Newton-John, and pop culture of the ‘70s to get all of the sidesplitting references, even if you don’t, you’ll still ❤️ the comical performances and the witty social commentary of Vape!
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes, without intermission.
Vape! The Grease Parody plays through Sunday, January 4, 2026, at Theater 555, 555 W 42nd Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $39-99, plus fees), go online, or find discount tickets at TodayTix.
