Felicia Black and her band Black Soul have been quietly tearing up a string of intimate venues on their recent mini tour. Small stages, big sound, the kind of gigs where the amps hum like they’re alive and the crowd becomes a single, sweaty heartbeat. Sadly, life kept me from jumping into the crowd for the earlier dates. This one, at Abnormal, was the first one I could actually make.
Worth. The. Wait.
Black Soul were in full throttle mode, serving nu metal grit with hard rock swagger. Riffs like thunderclaps. Vocals that could sandblast doubt off your bones. The room was already buzzing when suddenly the bodies on stage… multiplied.
In stormed a flash-mob fantasia of Pink Ladies and T-birds, leather jackets gleaming under the lights like rebellious disco balls.
Grease was certainly the word with this reveal that it will be the next big offering from Broadway Productions, and while I’ve been sitting on that nugget of knowledge for a few weeks, I was absolutely not prepared for this high-octane announcement. Instead of a social media post or a banner drop, we got a full-blown 1950s invasion.
The cast didn’t just wave and leave. They became backing dancers for several of Black Soul’s tracks. Picture greased-back hair headbanging in perfect sync. Picture Pink Ladies throwing shapes to down-tuned riffs. It was like someone spliced a jukebox with a distortion pedal and said, “Let’s see what happens.”
What happened was chaos. The joyful, theatrical, completely unhinged kind that is a delight to bear witness to. And the contrast worked brilliantly. The sweetness of Grease’s retro aesthetic colliding with Black Soul’s darker, crunchier sound created a kind of cultural time warp. It shouldn’t have worked. It absolutely did.
So my reward for finally making it to a show? Not just killer live music, but a surprise genre mash-up that turned a regular gig into an event. If this is how Broadway Productions plan to promote Grease, I can only imagine what opening night has in store. We'll have to wait until April to find out...
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