Grease continues Thursday through Sunday at the Providence Performing Arts Center with evening performances each day and additional matinee performances Saturday and Sunday.

Joan Marcus

The production of Grease that opened a one-week run at the Providence Performing Arts Center on Tuesday owes almost as much to the 1978 movie version as to the original 1972 Broadway musical. And while that makes for a better evening of songs, it changes the story in ways that may or may not help.

It’s still the tale of a group of teenagers (though the actors are all substantially older) in a ’50s high school going through changes, led by the story of Danny Zuko (played by Eric Schneider) and Sandy (Emily Padgett) and whether their across-the-tracks romance, born in the idylls of summer vacation, will last through the cauldron of school-days allegiances.

The show, a touring version of last year’s Broadway revival, includes songs from the film, among them the title song; the luminous “Sandy” and “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” sung by the star-crossed lovers; and the rousing closer, “You’re the One That I Want” — in other words, most of the best-known songs from the whole Grease deal.

While they’re short on ’50s authenticity (the sight of leather-jacketed greasers and poodle-skirted girls singing the Barry Gibb-penned title song is jarring), they’re big hits for a reason. And while Padgett’s voice was powerful but with too much musical-theatre enunciation for “Hopelessly Devoted,” the song’s place in the show made sense, advancing the story.

The problem is, the songs from the film advance the Danny-Sandy story line and the Danny-Sandy story line only. And the rest of the show isn’t constructed to handle that. There’s either too much of Danny and Sandy or there’s too much of everyone else. The delightful “Mooning,” for instance, sung by Rump (Will Blum) and Jan (Bridie Carroll), felt like (at least) one song too many, and it’s too good a song to feel that way.

There are still some quiet, dramatic moments, where the tensions of adolescent bonding make their presence known: “If it was up to me I’d never look at another chick but you,” Zuko says to Sandy; later, Sandy comes back with “Everything was just so much easier when it was just the two of us.” And the dynamic between Rizzo (Allie Schulz), Kenickie (David Ruffin) and Zuko, in which Rizzo is alternately passed between and comes between the two boys, is brought up quickly and just as quickly discarded.

The sets, by Derek McLane, are mostly pastel grotesques of the ’50s high school iconography, and they’re intentionally cartoonish, and successfully so. In the scene of Rizzo’s pregnancy scare, the contrast between the dazzling banality of the suburban-basement rec room and the life-changing issues on display makes for a solid gut-punch.

The show could have gotten a bit more mileage from these moments, but then it’s back to the singing and dancing. All of which was well and good, particularly the star turns by Carroll on “Raining on Prom Night” and Schulz on Rizzo’s “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.” The dancing was energetic and athletic, particularly the Hand Jive early in the second act.

American Idol winner Taylor Hicks’ cameo as Teen Angel went well, as he brought a no-nonsense pop voice to the delightfully nasty “Beauty School Dropout” and threw in some of his trademark harmonica, all the while giving a funny Liberace attitude to the whole appearance.

Schneider acquitted himself nicely on “Sandy” and was in good voice throughout, but didn’t have the gravity to make himself the central point of the show — Kenickie (David Ruffin) was a far more convincing alpha dog, and that threw the thing off balance a bit.

The miles are starting to show on the show itself: If you’re not pushing retirement age, you weren’t actually a teenager in this time, so the nostalgia is vicarious. And don’t even get me started on the gender politics.

Still, as a two-and-a-half-

hour collection of ’50s and ’50s-through-the-lens-of- the-’70s songs, it holds up great.

rmassimo@projo.com