Colleen Sullivan and Dahni Trujillo delivered their best performances so far as Grease hit the halfway mark in its six-night run at Peach Tree Golf and Country Club.

Is there a little competition going on here? If so, hooray! Yuba-Sutter theater-goers will only benefit as these to find their styles and push their capabilities.

In fact, the whole cast had tightened up their lines, made a few adjustments in the small stage business that goes with their lines.

There are still a few things the actors could improve a tad.

Matt Monaco finally remembered to drop his lunch in the scene where "Danny" has "Sandy" thrust at him. Only he remembered as he was about to exit the scene, not when he's first shocked by the Sandy surprise.

Shannon Doschers' line about him dropping the lunch really doesn't work without that underlying premise that he was so shocked Danny lost control of his extremities.

On Saturday he carried it off the stage with him and Doscher had to trim her "Jan" line, which is disappointing because Doscher has some of the best lines in the play and she works them as well as any.

Tyler Brand just about has his "Kenickie" part down rote, so it seems quibbling to point this out, but: HE'S NOT TAKING HIS TWINKIES OUT OF HIS LUNCH BAG.

During one of the rehearsals, co-director Staci Johnson explained to Brand that his scolding line, "I don’t eat crap like that" (or something to that effect) only works if the audience sees him drawing a couple of Ho-Hos out of his own lunch bag as he says it.

The whole small bit is a sight gag, really. The line alone is just a kvetch.

Instead of making it obvious to the audience he's pooh-poohing a tuna fish sandwich for a putatively healthier Ho-Ho, Brand eats the pastry as he would at his own school in real life. He keeps it half in the bag so he won't spill crumbs or wrapper. Sensible in life, maybe, but not for the stage.

But all these are minor points, considering the overall high quality of their performances and the energy they are bringing to the show.

One if-only disappointment is that "Cha-Cha" has no song. I would like to have heard Candee Jensen sing in this one. Besides being a crackerjack dancer, she has a stunning voice.

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.

In the balmy dusk a sold out crowd patiently waited for dark to descend on a former walnut orchard so the lights could go up on The Acting Company's ambitious production of Grease.

The lights went up on Bonnie Williams' character leading the timeless reunion of Rydell High, Class of '59 in the alma mater. Then down. Then up again.

And Heidi Ramey's wireless microphone sometimes cut out as her, "Margie," gave the keynote speech.

But from the moment she recalled to mind images of absent classmates dearly remembered and the players silently backed into the precious past, all technical problems receded before the energy of the talent cast.

The two months of work and imagination paid off with a relatively tight, well-paced show with consistent quality among the players and their individual numbers: No clunkers, several show-stoppers.

It has been interesting to watch co-directors Staci Johnson and Pierrette Jensen put the show together over the last two months, see the cast grow in their roles and the crews assemble the theater, stage, set, lights and sound from scratch in the last few days.

Mid-way through rehearsals it was learned that the Marysville Community Auditorium -- the planned venue for the show -- would not be available. After some fancy footwork Johnson hit upon the unusual solution of putting the show on amid the walnut trees of the Peach Tree Golf and Country Club.

Johnson, who is also musical director for the show, deserves much credit for helping the actors grow and improve. She made it clear what she wanted to achieve on stage and helped them to create it by, among other things, physically demonstrating the smiles, scowls and sashays she expected them to deliver.

To co-director Jensen goes much for the credit for realizing in costume and in color the overall atmosphere of the set.

A dance-heavy musical, Grease can stand or fall on its choreography. Luckily and skillfully, Candee Jensen and Jonathan Bryson rose to the challenge.

Master carpenter Randy Fayette and his helpers made the minimalist campus of Rydell High rise from a vacant lawn

And credit for the graphic touches that made it believable goes to Linda Plummer, with a little help from her friends.

As for the actors, singers and dancers a few words are worth saying.

Matt Monaco: A trophy of some sort should be created for him as "Danny Zuko." He was already an excellent and thoughtful actor, but arrived at this musical with what can only be described as a negligible singing voice. Yet, in the space of two months he bootstrapped himself from whispering around unreachable notes to hitting the high C's, strong and clear. Now that's an accomplishment that should stand him in good stead in the future. Still, no one's perfect, and Monaco needs to refrain from ad-libbing certain of "Danny's" lines and be more fastidious in his costumes and sound gear.

Colleen Sullivan: She's another voice that has magically morphed from marginal to melodious. Here is a talented actress with natural ear for dialogue. She is fairly consistently good throughout, but occasionally suffers inexplicable lapses. Two spring to mind. While singing "Hopeless Devoted" -- superlatively, it might be added -- she for some reason wanders over to the uttermost corner of the stage right apron and, instead of looking back over the crowd so they can see her face, instead has her "Sandy" face into the black, off-stage void. And when she returns to the picnic scene to chastise "Rizzo" for making fun of her she has this line where she says "I saw you making fun of me…," whereupon she is supposed to hit Rizzo. Only between the line and the punch is this little inexplicable gap, like she's reading the script in her mind and saying, "OK, this is where I reach out and punch Rizzo, and here I am doing it."

Dahni Trujillo: What I want to know is: Where's this girl's recording contract? She's the best voice in the cast. Absolutely star quality. Her "Rizzo's" "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee," is flawless, and her version of "There are Worse Things I Could Do" is enough to break the heart of any middle-ager thinking back on the One That Got Away;. But her "Rizzo" is a trifle diffident. Could be tougher, more mixed up and vulnerable. But then Trujillo did manage to get her large, powerful eyes under control just in time for opening night. Eye position is everything in acting and in rehearsals her liquid browns were roaming all over the set in a most disconcerting way.

Tyler Brand: At 15, this is one precocious actor. He has "Kenickie" well in mind and executes the role with ease. His is another surprisingly good and strong voice. His mannerisms are somewhat narrow, but they will widen as he takes on more different roles -- which he really ought to do.

Sara Guerrero: Tall, long-legged and very commanding, her "Marty" is visually the queen of the cast. Vitalizes her character with unassuming ease. Her smooth acting, coupled with a strong, mid-range voice provides the audience with an unforgettable "Freddy My Love." On the money from first entrance to curtain call.

Austin Dixon: Well known already as a prize-winning competitive jazz dancer, he sings well and his "Doody" displays an innate sense of stage acting -- which is not to be confused with film acting, which most of the cast seems to emulate. Of all the performers in this show, Dixon is probably the most well-rounded. If he sticks to it and works a little tap into his repertoire, he could be another Ray Bolger, or even the next Tommy Tune.

Mary Cobb and Shannon Doscher: These two deserve mention together, because they've run a dead heat for creating the best, most fully-realized characters in the show -- as "Frenchy" and "Jan," respectively. Grease will be made many times over again by other community theater groups, but they’ll be hard pressed to top Cobb and Doscher. Cobb has so perfectly captured the sweetly ditzy "Frenchy" that it will be hard to think her voice could ever sound like anything but a squeak.

James Wilton: streetwise dancer, effortless actor, serviceable singer, just needs to smile more. His easy-going energy as "Sonny" exemplifies why the Burger Palace Boys fit together so well a chemically balanced unit.

Jasper Oliver: A comic in life, a comic in theater. This guy is a true trouper who can take any role and enthusiastically make it his own. As "Roger," he has parlayed his untrained voice into one of the most applauded solos in the show, "Mooning."

Bonnie Williams and Heidi Ramey: These two advanced the plot by delivering good performances of stock characters in the collective national memory of high school days. Williams aptly plays, "Patty," the sugary over-achieving blonde running for office. Ramey, who fairly exudes innocent enthusiasm, sets the whole play in motionher "Argie" conjures the past, sending the cast and audience back to relive it in song and dance.

Candee Jensen: Jensen is a complete professional: a jazz and tap dancer, a seasoned actor who proudly squeezes every last little bit of juice out of every part, and oh what a voice. When she walks in as "Cha-Cha" the audience lights up and the characters around her shrink away. She has too much talent to linger longer in Yuba-Sutter. Get this girl to Hollywood fast. Better yet, New York, and NOW!

Joe Moye: "Johnny Casino" lives! He gives the most authentic '50s stylings to the two parts he plays, as a rock 'n' roll singer and a nerdy high school student. Where does all this talent come from in a town this size?

Noah Gillet: He plaus "Vince Fontaine" wiht a true radio quality voice and good looks that remind one of Russell Crowe.

Derek Riley: This "Teen Angel" is the biggest surprise in the show. He started out in rehearsals as something of a tousled tike with "What am I doing here, anyway?" worried look on his face. His voice seemed to be getting stronger, that was for sure. But it wasn’t until he popped out as the white clad angel and reaching for the audience that he finally revealed what he had -- like a maiden colt in the seventh race at Aqueduct entering the clubhouse turn dead last and the suddenly sprinting by the pack to win by a nose at the finish.

Pierrette Jensen: The musical's co-director and chief costumier plays "Miss Lynch" the quintessential high school principal with comic verve. The up-and-comers in the cast would be well-advised to watch her stage techniques, for with such examples there would be no future

April Clark and Alex Mazerolle: This "Prom Singers" duo work together well, providing back up singing to "Sandy's" "Raining on Prom Night" and as singers, dancers and high school students in the ensemble. April is a developing singer who deserves more notice and a couple of good parts to grow into. At 12 Mazerolle is the youngest in the cast, She has seems to have learned the most in her time in Grease and made the most of it. She started out as a modest dancer, but soon assimilated all the social cues and moves she saw in the older players. In two months of grueling rehearsals, her smile widened and voice strengthened to a remarkable degree.

Kenni Fayette and Lindsey Tabler: These two well-trained, award-winning jazz dancers added considerable energy and physicality to the show's musical numbers. They put in the highlights so needed to bolster the less-trained actors' limited moves. Fayette especially added winsome charm and austere grace to the show's front line.

Mark Johnson and Jenny Grining: This couple -- married in real life -- provided the show with some great dancing and its longest running sight gag. They were the "make-out couple" always seen smooching in the background when they weren't rockin' and rollin' through arduous acrobatic spins.

Amanda Gray: another dancer/high school dancer whose yeoman's work in the dancing line added personality to the production. She's another natural dancer with very exuberant moves.

Kyle Noland and Philip Roberson: These two deserve special mention, if only under the rubric of "most improved." At 14, both are in the glorious process of smoothing their youthful talents into more polished forms. It was amazing to watch the basketball-tall, sometimes gawky Noland mellow -- with an actual girl, no less -- at the Rydell High School prom. And Roberson, really has come out of his shell as a dancer, neophyte guitarist and performer. He's still miserly with his winning smiles, but that will come in time. Let's hope there are more plays and parts on the near horizons of both boys.

The show runs through Aug. 3, with tickets for $12 on sale at the customer service kiosk at The Mall in Yuba City.