Or “open lines,” if you like anachronisms.

Assuming high schools can still do musicals, will be allowed to or want to, I wonder how the four classic high school musicals (all about high school) will fare. I’ve seen ’em all. “Grease” is tied with “Hairspray” for the worst (but is arguably the most fun). “Mean Girls” had its Broadway run prematurely killed by the pandemic, but the show is pretty slick and the book is the best of the four. That show’s biggest problem is the problem of the majority of hit musicals since the Seventies: the technical requirements to make it work are beyond the capabilities of most high schools (and community theaters as well).

That leaves “Bye-Bye Birdie,” the oldest of the shows and over-all, probably the best. But the Elvis craze is ancient history, high school girls don’t scream and faint any more (that’s progress at least), and much of what makes the show funny are references to Fifties cultural touchpoints (Ed Sullivan?) that today’s teens won’t appreciate or even understand. “Bye-Bye Birdie” also has a movie version that has aged badly, and was never that hot despite a great cast. Ann-Margret was never believable as an innocent high school girl. Not for a second.

All four shows are also very white—can’t have that! Rated by diversity points, the shows stack up as “Hairspray,” “Mean Girls,” and then the other two in a distant tie in Systemic Racism Hell. I suppose you could have Conrad Birdie, the Elvis character, be black, or even play him as a parody of another icons-of-color like Little Richard or Chuck Berry, but his songs would be stylistically alien to those singers.