GREASE The Musical News Archive Cal Hawes' Blog - Part 1

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Cal Hawes' Blog - Piccadilly Theatre

Hi there everyone!  I’ve been asked by the Grease website team to do a blog of the show, and am sitting here in my little office at the Piccadilly Theatre in London, wondering where to start...  There is so much to tell you about Grease The Musical, which has now been at the Piccadilly for over two years and continues to draw in some amazing crowds.  We have eight performances a week but doing the show is just a small part of the job:  on Monday some of the tech staff were involved in schools’ workshops, showing kids that there are some fabulous and interesting jobs backstage;  we also had to perform for the prestigious Royal Variety Club’s ‘Miss World’ Charity extravaganza (of which more later); today we finished auditions for January’s cast change; tomorrow two of the cast, Bennett and Faye, have to dress up for a photoshoot; on Friday we begin rehearsals with our new ‘Danny’..  and so it goes on.  Never a dull moment in the West End!

By now everyone has pretty much recovered from Monday’s extra performance in aid of the Royal Variety Club.  Having done the show as usual on Monday night, we then had to pile into a fleet of people-carriers and head over to Park Lane, to the very posh Grosvenor House Hotel.  There, the RVC were hosting a charity event in conjunction with Miss World, and all the Miss World contestants were there!  All looking fabulous, of course.  There was a lot of frock envy going on with the Grease girls...  Quite how the Miss World girls get to be so tall and slim is anyone’s guess – most of them are about 6 feet.  Our two sound boys, Gareth and Mike, were having difficulty concentrating on their work, being constantly distracted by beautiful women.

We were the last item of the evening’s entertainment.  Several hours of rehearsal over the last few days paid off in a brilliant show – which certainly woke up the guests, many off whom were nodding off after much booze and rich food.  Charlotte, our Dance Captain, had the brilliant idea of putting the girls into ‘Greased Lightnin’, and there was no shortage of volunteers.  Sophie, Lizzi and Ali were all up for it, and the four of them were easily a match for the boys.  Shame we can’t put the girls in the regular show version!
We didn’t finish at the Grosvenor until well after midnight but nobody minded. The Variety Club did a sterling job looking after us (posh dinner upstairs pre-show) and laid on some big expensive shiny cars to take us all home.  As Sophie said to me later ‘I felt like a movie star, going home in my chauffeur driven limo’!

Anyway, I can hear ‘You’re The One That I Want’ coming over the tannoy so we’re coming to the end of the show.  Time for me to head downstairs to watch the curtain call and make sure all is well.

Until next time
Cal