YOU BETTER SHAPE UP

LIKE A GREAT MANY PEOPLE WITH TIME on our hands, I always enjoy a visit to London in the summertime to take in a show, and each year I am more than pleased to take in a revival of a production I enjoyed some years ago when it was first performed. One such festival of brightness was enjoyed by myself and my good lady wife last Sunday afternoon.

"TIME", AS THEY SOMETIMES SAY, "WAITS FOR NO MAN", and the cast of the musical 'Grease' have certainly aged over the years, but, to my mind, are still able to put on a decent show, even though in the original moving picture version I was somewhat concerned about the age difference between the main characters. The relationship between 'Angie' and 'Alexizuko' may have seemed odd at the time, but they have now comfortably grown into their roles, suggesting that this will run and run as they grow into deafness and dementia together.

OSTENSIBLY, ANGIE AND ALEXIZUKO would have nothing in common, she being a prim and proper 'piano teacher type', while Alexizuko is a drug-snorting Anarcho-Marxist member of a motorcycle gang whose main desire is the end of civilisation as we know it and who spent a large part of his youth hurling Molotov cocktails through the windows of banks, hamburger restaurants and branches of small mutual lending companies.

HOWEVER, THEIR FIRST KISS CHANGES EVERYTHING, after a meeting in Paris, with Angie then weeping on her pillow while singing the beautiful ballad Hopelessly Devoted to EU, as she thinks deeply about the now absent Alexizuko and whether tomorrow his feelings will remain the same.

ANGIE'S WISHES ARE DASHED, HOWEVER, when she hears news of a possible rival, after Alexizuko does not turn up for an arranged meeting with her, instead perhaps falling into the arms of the mysterious "Putzie", about whom extremely little is known except that he too enjoys a bit of dogging and biking. (He is included in the cast list for the moving picture production, but no one of this name appears in the final cut.) News reaches Angie of this "Putzie" and some hangers-on serenading Alexizuko with the song Business School Dropout.

NEVERTHELESS, ALEXIZUKO, TORN BETWEEN two lovers and agonising night after night as to what his future should be, sings the haunting Summer Nights, on Midsummer Night in homage to the midnight meetings held behind the backs of his biking community friends and during which he has sold everyone who previously trusted him down the river.

THE TOUCHING FINAL ACT ENDS with the song that brings both together in a harmony that indicates that all will be well forever. This is You're The One That I Want, the happy end that makes the whole audience go home satisfied; until we get to the sequels "Greece 2", "Greece 3", "Greece 4" and so on.