EXCLUSIVE: Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live, Broadway’s POTUS) and Amy Spanger (Broadway’s Rock Of Ages, Chicago and The Wedding Singer) are the latest stars to join next week’s one-night-only Vape! The Grease Parody benefit for the .
Vape! The Grease Parody, set for Tuesday, March 11 at 7:30 pm/ET at The Town Hall in New York City has not completed its casting. Dratch, who will play Teen Angel, and Spanger, as Marty, join the previously announced Kerry Butler (Sandy), James Carpinello (Danny), Ann Harada (Jan) Jackie Hoffman (Rizzo), Aisha Jackson (Frenchie), Joel Perez (Kenickie) and Jelani Remy (Sonny).
Vape! is a send-up of the iconic musical Grease, poking fun, as the synopsis states, “at all the wonderful moments, sexual innuendos, outrageous characters, rivalries and secret romances from the original, while taking a satirical look at the state of youth culture today, which may have evolved, but never really changes.”
Vape! is by Catie Hogan & Sketchworks Comedy, with lyrics & additional book by Billy Recce and Danny Salles. The musical will be directed by Jack Plotnick and the evening hosted by Seth Rudetsky. Producers are Sketchworks Comedy and Visceral Entertainment, with Rudetsky and James Wesley Jackson serving as creative consultants.
After originally premiering in Atlanta in 2018, Vape! was scheduled to premiere in NYC in August 2019 at Improv Asylum. Ten days before the first performance, the rightsholders of Grease served Sketchworks Comedy a cease-and-desist letter, claiming Vape! violated their copyright. As a result, Sketchworks Comedy filed a lawsuit against Grease, believing that they were protected under fair use law. After a two-and-a-half year legal battle, Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York ruled that Vape! is, indeed, a parody.
