For oldies in the audience, Grease offers a night of blissful nostalgia. But for the majority of those at the New Theatre this week the show supplies a glimpse of ancient history.

That this scintillating musical exerts such powerful appeal for young people says much for the timelessness of its writers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s achievement.

For if the hairstyles and fashions have changed since the late 1950s— and, my, how they have! — the emotions exhibited by those sporting them are recognisably the same as kids feel today The path to happiness trodden by Danny and Sandy is still being followed half a century later. Who can’t empathise with his fear of being thought soppy by his greaser mates, or her wish for that one true love?

Danny Bayne takes to the role of his namesake with all the strutting confidence you’d expect from the winner of ITV’s Grease Is the Word. Carina Gillespie shows us a demure and appealing Sandy, whose transformation into a ravishing sex-bomb for You’re the One That I Want supplies an eye-popping climax to the evening.

This song, of course, is only one of the great tunes from the show, a number of which climbed high into the charts at the time of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s iconic film. Summer Nights, Greased Lightnin’ (fine work from Ricky Rojas’s Kenickie), We Go Together and the rest still sound wonderful here with the backing of a top-class on-stage band led by musical director Gareth Williams.

The dance routines are knock-out, testimony to the skills of the great Arlene Phillips who supplies the choreography. No doubt, the Olympic gold medal skater Robin Cousins might have been able to offer help in this respect — but he is too busy showing us the Teen Angel. The director is David Gilmore.

Until Saturday. 0844 871 3020 (www.newtheatreoxford.org.uk).