Oconee Youth Playhouse returns to 'Grease'

The 1978 movie version of "Grease" doesn't ever seem to age. When viewed in a certain way, it seems positively modern.

Sure, the girls are in poodle skirts, but when Rizzo sings "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee," she could be singing about the carefully constructed fa ades of any of the Disney-employed actresses. When Danny sings "Sandy," lamenting that high school society is keeping them apart, he's in the star-crossed lovers plot that worked for both Shakespeare and "High School Musical."

Between Frenchy's pink hair and the chorus girls' towering headdresses of gleaming silver curlers, "Beauty School Drop-Out" looks like a Lady Gaga video.

The film version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, like the noticeably raunchier 1972 stage play before it, offered something new in musical theater: teenaged characters who acted like real kids, not the safe and sanitized ideal preferred by their parents.

Even though Sandy drastically changes her appearance at the end to completely win over Danny, she still declares her independence when singing: "You better shape up, you better understand, to my heart I must be true."

Shane Hannon, who with his wife, Terra Hanno