Vape! The Grease Parody

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By Jack Quinn, Publisher

There was a palpable charge in the theater before the first beat. Every seat was filled, the air thick with anticipation — a downtown crowd that had somehow migrated to far West 42nd Street. The energy felt more East Village than Midtown: ironic, knowing, and ready to roar for Vape! The Grease Parody.

The show opens with Sandy shimmering on the beach as a mermaid and Danny strutting in like a sunburned demigod. What follows is the inspired number “Summer Not,” a shameless send-up of Grease’s “Summer Nights.” When Danny croons, “Summer lovin’ had me some fun,” and Sandy answers, “Summer lovin’, I met the one,” the audience instantly gets the joke. By the time they volley lines like “Pulled a girl out of the sea / Met a boy, cuter than me,” the crowd is howling. The lyrics keep topping themselves — “Some are fun, but then some’r not.” And when Danny swears he’s “deleted all his apps,” only for a tell-tale Grindr notification to ping through the speakers, the house absolutely loses it. That single bleep says everything about comic precision of Billy Reece and Danny Salles’ lyrics — parody rooted in cultural truth.

 

Scott Silagy makes a terrific Danny, blending smooth physical comedy with surprising warmth. His movement has a restless, improvisational looseness, but his timing never wavers. Lara Strong’s Sandy manages the near-impossible — finding moments of emotional truth amid the glitter and chaos. Her “Hopelessly Gaslighted by You” shifts effortlessly from parody to pathos, drawing laughter one minute and genuine sympathy the next. Together, they anchor the show’s absurdity in something recognizably human.

The ensemble, meanwhile, moves like a single kinetic organism. The highlight — and the night’s loudest ovation — comes with “Green Lightning,” a brilliantly staged eco-anthem where Danny brags, “She’s got a zero-net emission and biofuel exhaust, oh yeah.” The number builds through a rapid-fire series of puns — “With three miles on a charge, yeah you know I’m packing large … When they hear I don’t pollute, they’ll be polishing my flute in Green Lightning.” Jack Plotnick’s direction turns it into controlled mayhem: fog machines hiss, dancers ripple through vape clouds, and Danny finally belts, “Go Green Lightning, you’re making Greta Thunberg drool.” The audience erupts. It’s the kind of showstopper that justifies the entire parody.

Plotnick’s pacing throughout is faultless — 75 minutes with no intermission that feel brisk but complete. Design elements by David Goldstein are minimal yet witty: LED glows pierce the haze, and every prop earns its laugh. The “Teen Angel” puppet scene pushes the absurdism a step further; whether it succeeds depends on your tolerance for meta-comedy, but it certainly keeps the audience on edge.

The only misstep is the sound design by Daniel Lundberg, which occasionally muddied the diction. From mid-house, some lyrics blurred, and for a parody, that loss stings — so many of Recce and Salles’ best jokes live in the rhyme. Still, the crowd stayed with the cast every moment, laughing, cheering, and sometimes shouting encouragement mid-scene. The atmosphere felt communal, almost conspiratorial, as if everyone knew they were part of something gleefully subversive.

Compared with Forbidden Broadway, Vape! The Grease Parody feels like a complete musical, not a revue stitched from sketches. The book by Catie Hogan with Leanna Adams, John D. Babcock III, Casey Holloway, Julie Shaer and Brian Troxell with additional lyrics and additional book by Recce and Salles sustain an actual narrative while skewering every cultural trope from TikTok to Tinder. The humor is sharp but affectionate, never smug. Vape! knows exactly what it’s parodying — and why — and that clarity gives it surprising emotional heft.

When the lights fade, what lingers isn’t just laughter but admiration for the craft behind the chaos. Vape! is brash, fast, and unapologetically smart — the rare spoof that works both as satire and as theater. It proves you can love something, laugh at it, and reinvent it all at once. Sometimes the most electric thing onstage isn’t the lightning — it’s the spark of recognition.

Vape! The Grease Parody (through December 28, 2025)

Sketchworks Comedy

Theater 555, 555 W. 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.VapeTheMusical.com

Running time: 75 minutes without an intermission