There are major mysteries in the world: the Loch Ness monster, the Bermuda Triangle and how Grease could have run for 3,388 performances on Broadway, at one point holding the longevity record.

OK, let’s assume that theatergoers identify with the cartoonish denizens of Rydell High, circa 1959, or they wish they did. Still, embracing this show by rookie writers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey means overlooking the simplistic rock ’n’ roll chords of the score, the clumsy, flimsy script and the musical’s underlying message of bowing to peer pressure and fitting in at all costs.

Whatever the reasons for the show’s popularity, Grease has been revived every generation or so since it first hit New York in 1972. The most recent production, which spawned the national tour at the Kravis Center this week, was the illegitimate child of a TV reality casting competition. Perhaps picking up on that theme, the tour lures in audiences with a minuscule cameo by American Idol winner Taylor Hicks.

The inert central plot concerns the prospects for happiness between summer sweethearts Sandy Dumbrowski, hopelessly devoted to being a goody-two shoes, and cool, but commitment-phobic Danny Zuko. Here it fails to gain much dramatic momentum under Kathleen Marshall’s lazy direction. She fares far better with her energetic, precision choreography, notably on the gymnastic Greased Lightnin’ number and the hand-eye coordination of Born to Hand-Jive.

Jacobs and Casey never intended Grease to be a star vehicle — as it became with the John Travolta/Olivia Newton-John 1978 movie version. They spread the songs around among the cast members, with tunes that are often irrelevant to the plot, but tend toward dream fantasies, of guitar skill, a shiny hot rod or a guardian angel, for instance. The most interesting supporting character is surely tough-as-nails, sexually liberated Betty Rizzo, played fiercely by Allie Schulz. It helps that she gets the evening’s best song, the unrepentant There Are Worse Things I Could Do.

As Sandy, Lauren Ashley Zakrin certainly has the necessary pipes, as she proves with Hopelessly Devoted to You, one of four numbers imported from the movie. Eric Schneider’s Danny Zuko moves quite well and acquits himself with his singing, but neither performer manages a spark that would clue us in that these two characters were meant for each other.

If you are going to see Hicks, you will wait until halfway through the second act, when he makes an elevated entrance at the Burger Palace and proceeds to over-sing the winking Beauty School Dropout in an insistent American Idol style that leaves little room for subtlety. He is onstage during the show for roughly five minutes, then returns after the curtain calls to do a cut from his new CD. Yes, it is available for purchase in the lobby.

By now, the songs from Grease have the asset of familiarity, but if you would like to hear more imaginative parodies of the period, find a production of Hairspray. If you want a better dance at the gym, you need to seek out West Side Story. But if, for some reason, you crave a song all about mooning, then Grease is the one that you want.