Second night out the actors still had the juice for a high-energy performance of Grease at the open-air theater at the Peach Tree Golf and Country Club.

Coming from as far away as Sacramento and Elk Grove, the sold-out crowd brought its own power source. The sought to boost the electricity by sharing the power with applause, clapping even before the show started as the actor' faces popped on the slide screen in the opening credits.

There were no standing ovations. Yet. Audiences don't climb on their seats and hoot, holler an clap until they've witnessed perfection, and as everyone knows, that's a very chancy proposition. But it's reachable, and the cast in this edition of Grease can get there.

But to do that, the cast needs to know something about rock 'n' roll. Not rock 'n' roll as it is practiced today. But rock 'n' roll as it was lived and felt at the dawn of its creation. Which is what Greaae is all about, and why it is so popular.

Before the next show, the cast of this Grease could learn a lot simply by looking out at the audience and taking stock. What are they, largely?

They are oldsters who've come to be entertained by the music they grew up with and stories they remember. They are hoping, with a little luck, to recapture through the music and scenes the few moments of triumph, truth, and those painful recollections of that first, and worst, broken heart.

That's what the immensely popular Grease is all about.

If you look at the audience again, you'll also see many of them have brought grandchildren. Even great-children. They are trying to impart, or share, that feeling to the younger generation a sense of what they were, lo, those many years ago.

They can no longer dance, or sing, or crack sophomoric jokes for themselves. Their knees have given out, their voices departed, their humor blunted and jaded by hard realities. The music and the memories they want to relive are theirs no longer.

In sum, they want, they hope, they yearn for the cast to do it for -- the Matt Monacos, the Dahni Trujillos, the Jasper Olivers, the Colleen Sullivans, the Tyler Brands, the James Wiltons, the Kenni Fayettes, the Sharon Doschers, the Sara Guerreros, the Alex Mazerolles, the Austin Dixons -- they see on the stage to relive it for them.

Remember, the cast and the play are but a vehicle through which the audience lives again. And it is possible, every so often, to do it perfectly.

Now, perfection is not a quantity. It is a quality. It is a quality interpreted though the mind of the person seeking it and executed with what talents the seeker has at hand.

Van Gogh and Bob Ross bought the same color paints. The difference between their paintings was the difference in what each felt and strove to achieve. One was genius, unrecognized in life. The other is a television personality with a paintbrush and a soothing voice.

So. Grasp what the audience wants. Grab what roles and talents are given to you. Go for broke.

Advice is worthless without examples. Let's compare Dahni Trujillo and Colleen Sullivan, two young women with similar talents, differently interpreted.

In their second performances Saturday night both reached for a higher plane in her songs, "There are Worse Things I Could Do" and "Hopelessly Devoted to You."

Both wandered around their points of perfection. Neither quite made it. Hey, but that's saying a lot.

Trujillo came closer than Sullivan did, at least in the opinion of one close observer in the audience. And the obvious spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Trujillo will get to her goal in her own way, no doubt about it. But Sullivan may not, and that's a shame, for she is not that far from the mark.

Since Grease is about rock 'n' roll, let's talk about what many consider to be the best, the greatest, the most perfect rock 'n' roll song of all time is the 1963 classic, "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, a girl group trio, and produced by Phil Spector.

If you've never heard it, what a pity. For the record, Here are the simple lyrics.

Any kid alive and within reach of a radio in 1963 and several years thereafter has heard "Be My Baby." Any girl who foolishly gave her heart away. Any shy boy who has pined with unrequited love for the equally shy and unrequited girl in the next row. Any Vietnam veteran who ever put a quarter in a PX jukebox. Anyone.

A more complete story of how "Be My Baby" was produced can be found here." But from that story here is why it achieved perfection:

Ronnie Spector said a few years ago that nothing makes her prouder than that song, and she recalled meeting Bill Clinton after performing for world leaders at the G8 summit. They met up after the concert. 'He just opened his arms and gave me the biggest grin and he started singing "Be My Baby" to me.'

'Ronnie sings as if the honour and bravery in speaking up were all,' Stephanie Zacharek wrote of the song in the online magazine Salon last year. 'In fact, she sings as if she knows that the boy's returning her love is secondary to her own assuredness. She's jumping off a cliff, and she's got your hand - wherever she goes, you're going, too - which is maybe why so many people feel so passionately about 'Be My Baby'. Every time I hear it, I'm almost painfully aware of the leap this girl takes.'

Years after the recording session, someone at the studio let it be known that of the three Ronettes only Ronnie was singing on the record, the other two judged too flat and replaced by session singers. Too flat to record, but too saleable to dismiss: Spector knew almost as much about the marketing of pop as the recording of it; Pop Idol could have taught him nothing.

Phil and Ronnie were married in 1968 and divorced five years later. Most of the years since have been spent in the law courts, battling first over the custody of their adopted children and then over money. Living with Phil 'was like being in the dark all the time', she has said. 'Phil went out annually, so that meant I didn't go out either...' In her autobiography she wrote that if she did go out alone in the car, Spector liked it if she had a blow-up man in the seat beside her.

In 1987 'Be My Baby' was featured in the movie Dirty Dancing and it became a special song again - for a new generation and to those who had forgotten how great it was. The soundtrack yielded millions, but little of it found its way to the Ronettes. Ronnie issued a writ for a share of the royalties, and the case took 15 years to crawl through the New York courts. At one stage the Ronettes claimed that 'Be My Baby' had made them only $15,000. But towards the end of last year a judge ruled that the Ronettes had signed away all their rights in perpetuity in 1963, and Spector legally owned everything. So the girl never got the boy, because it was the other way around all along.

In case anyone missed it, the key point bears repeating:

'…she sings as if she knows that the boy's returning her love is secondary to her own assuredness. She's jumping off a cliff, and she's got your hand - wherever she goes, you're going, too - which is maybe why so many people feel so passionately about 'Be My Baby'. Every time I hear it, I'm almost painfully aware of the leap this girl takes.'

So, if she wants to achieve a small moment of perfection for her audience, and for herself, all Sullivan has to do is remember that as she is standing and singing "Hopelessly Devoted" at the edge of the stage she is really standing at the edge of the same cliff where Ronnie Spector stood.

It's up to Sullivan whether she has it in her to make the leap.

As for Trujillo, when she's up here on the stage singing "Worse Things" she already seems to have made that choice, heart and soul, which is why she comes that much closer to perfection.