True Grease

In America, the recent past has become a cultural staple. First the '20s, '30s and '40s, gleaming with just enough romantic distance, were conjured in theater, art and fashion. Now the nostalgia nuts seem to be closing the gap with the present. That dreary decade, the '50s, is apparently being dusted off for a revival.

In films, The Last Picture Show brings back the groping, mindless mood of much of the period as the sound track oozes record hits of the day. Roger Kahn's book The Boys of Summer reprises the great, winning days of the '50s Brooklyn Dodgers. Revivals of '50s rock 'n' roll--arguably the decade's only cultural contribution--have become a regular feature at rock emporiums. Even Buffalo Bob Smith of TV's old Howdy Doody show made a comeback on campuses last year, and is still hanging on with a singing radio commercial for Riunite wine (TIME, April 24).

Stuffing Bras. If all this amounts to a trend, then its culmination so far is off-Broadway's Grease, billed as "A New '50s Rock 'n' Roll Musical." Grease's book is a silly boy-girl story, and its music and lyrics are a pastiche of early '50s rock, rarely approaching the authentic inanity of the originals. But it is exquisite and excruciating in its details, from the boys' ducktail haircuts, leather jackets and cool, hang-loose slouches to the girls' cinch belts, nylon blouses, ballet slippers with white socks, pedal pushers and black gang jackets with their insignia, The Pink Ladies, pink-embroidered on their backs.

The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards this year, and now, after a three-month run, it is about to move to a Broadway theater.

Grease's creators both went to high school in the '50s--Warren Casey, 37, in Yonkers, N.Y., and Jim Jacobs, 29, in Chicago. Jacobs, who says he was a greaser (a guy who wore his hair in a greasy ducktail), conceived the show as a celebration of the dull but peaceful era "when the only thing kids knew about the President was that he played golf and had trouble with his intestines, and the biggest tragedy in life was if you didn't get your dad's car for the drive-in."

Like the authors, most members of the audience at Manhattan's Eden Theater look like graduates of Rydell High School, class of 1959, where Grease is set, and they all wallow in the golden-oldies atmosphere. Laughter cascades over the footlights with every reference to "making out," exchanging school rings, going to proms in strapless dresses, stuffing Kleenex into bras and using fake ID cards to get into bars. But behind the laughter is bemusement. "They can identify with it all," says Casey, but he adds, "They are astonished that this is the past already."

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