It’s that time of year when London’s Secret Cinema charges you to briefly live inside the world of a film they’ve chosen for you. As soon as I got the email revealing this year’s pick was Grease, I slicked back my hair, threw on a biker jacket, plain white tee, skinny black jeans, and mentally prepared to shove some nerds into lockers, smoke wherever I liked, and dance like I’d been tasered. Instead, I paid good money to watch what felt like a dress rehearsal.

Secret Cinema is (or was; apparently some shit’s happened behind the scenes that I cannot find the care to look into) touted among those that are in the know to be some sort of life-altering event with the secrecy equivalent to the Illuminati as far as understood it. The people who’d harp on about how much of a memory it created for them to clutch onto for the rest of their lives were the same sort who would pair wine with different meals and pretend it made a difference.

Of course, I just had to see what all the fuss was about. So I went. Three times. The first one was a Casino Royal production which was good - full of suave espionage, hidden areas, calling passers by on pay phones and reading secret codes that baffled me and the person who picked up. I didn’t have a clue what was happening. The second was Dirty Dancing which, and I don’t say this lightly, was really good.

Sadly for the Secret Cinema though, this review is of the 2025 production of Grease which was quite crap.

Following the map sent to my email and dressed for our first day at high school, we got off at Battersea station and joined the slow-moving parade of T-Birds and Pink Ladies making their way to the venue. On the way, a promotional team entirely unrelated to Secret Cinema handed out cans of craft beer, which, sadly for the Secret Cinema, turned out to be the highlight of the night. After a riverside stroll and a walk through a park, the sound of live music began to creep into the air, accompanied by the glow of bright lights spelling out Rydell High.

Our tickets were checked by a cheery actor dressed as a student, putting on their best bright and bubbly American accent to shunt us into their little slice of immersion. Two seconds later, a kid shuffled up from the side and asked if we had any ride coupons in the most soul-dead, monotone English accent imaginable. Superb immersion. We accepted our single ride coupon each and walked down a road towards the bright lights of a funfair they’d set up in a car park, where Secret Cinema were recreating the film’s final scene (spoilers). A large screen showed a live band playing some of the musical’s hits from inside a set-dressed community hall posing as Rydell High. A few guests milled about, inspecting the three attractions scattered around the car park. I was already underwhelmed.

The last event I went to, Dirty Dancing, took over an entire park. It had dance classes, track-and-field games, themed bars, buildings with actual interiors from the film, and timed performances with actors and dancers weaving through the crowds. After a few hours, we were gently herded onto the grass to watch the film on a massive outdoor screen above a sprawling stage where key scenes were played out live in tandem. It was impressively done. Here though, It was a car park and an events building with barely anything to see or do. People arrived in dribs and drabs, each with the same look on their face: is this it? Most looked quietly bewildered.

We took all of twelve seconds to walk around the funfair and decided to get something to eat at one of the two places to get food outside. I went for a vegetarian burger for more money than I had ever paid up until that point for one, and a side of french fries for an extra £4.50. The delta between the high-as-fuck price and the low-as-shit quality was slightly wider than the width of the Milky Way galaxy; but hey, we were here to have fun, not to complain about how crap is all was.

We arrived at 19:30, just as the tickets instructed, so we took our time; eating, chatting, and glancing at the big screen showing a live band presumably performing inside the Rydell High setup. We felt safe in the assumption that we had time to explore and get involved in whatever ‘immersive’ activities were on offer before the main event began. But during the band’s intermissions, film clips started playing. Then another musical number kicked off, and the band came back in like they were part of the soundtrack. We started questioning everything. Had the main event already begun? Were these clips just filler while guests did guest things? If so, why was the actual film playing? We finished our crap food and scrambled inside the high school like kids late for class on the first day, unsure if we’d missed the whole bloody point.

The lobby had been decorated with fake trophy cabinets, lockers lining the corridors to the bathrooms, flags of the Rydell High football team everywhere, but we streamed past it into the main hall still confused to hell as to what was going on. Inside was a raised central stage where actors portraying the cast were singing and acting out one of Sandy’s pieces. Behind us was the live band we saw on the screen outside perfectly performing the songs. We did a short walk around the central stage. On the sides were different bars, themed of course from scenes from the movie and all selling the same six drinks or so. The famous auto shop (which was a burger joint), some bleachers for people to sit on, and a VIP section which was styled to look like a drive in theatre where everybody sat there incredibly passive like foreign-exchange students that didn’t understand the language or culture.

It slowly dawned on us that the damn main event had already started. We were halfway through the film-slash-performance and I was fabulously pissed off. The email from Secret Cinema had been so secretive, it neglected to include a secret schedule, something that might’ve hinted at when the actual show began.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been to two of these before, and they both followed the same template: an hour or so of wandering about, exploring, then everyone’s gently herded to the main event. A simple “doors open at this time, show starts at that time” would’ve gone a long way. Not that it would’ve helped much as there was fuck all to do anyway.

We found an area by the VIP section and just stood there watching the central stage where the actors were hamming it up. I was trying especially hard to still understand what the hell was going on maybe, just maybe, be pulled into the magic. But every third person was someone dressed as an assistant director on a filmset with an earpiece and constantly mumbling down walkie talkies.

As if that wasn’t enough to kill the vibe, a remote-controlled camera dolly kept rolling around the space, flanked by a small security detail who gently ushered people out of its way. The crew spent the majority of the time giggling and talking down their earpieces all while forcefully projecting the air of uncool kids at school trying to emulate being popular as adults from what they learned by watching movies alone.

After a few rounds of us getting a bad deal by trading huge sums of money for very sub-par produce (drinks, ice-cream shakes), we were told to head outside where the finale was about to blow our socks off - that bit in the movie where they sing a song and dance at a carnival or something (spoilers). For the first and only time that night, the crowd came together instead of wandering around like the confused undead. People were singing, clapping, smiling and finally have an okay time. But it wasn’t enough to cover the vast wealth I had paid to be there.

As soon as the production ended, everyone fished out their single ride coupon and queued up for one of the three rides in the car park. The queues snaked around like we were forced to line up. When we finally reached the front for the madhouse, the ticket operator informed us it was three tickets per person because of course it was. Astonished and slightly disgusted by it all, we span on our barely-danced heels and made haste for the exit back into the real world.

Saddened by the shit state of what the Secret Cinema had become and still clutching on to the fact that the best part of the night was the free promotional can of beer handed out before we even arrived, I’ve made a decision to never ever go again. Probably.