BOBBY’S best friend is Ray whose younger sister Laura has the hots for Bobby… but Bobby has got a crush on cool chick Sue.

It’s 1961 and Bobby, an awkward but talented teenager, is auditioning for a band at the local youth club. He almost gets the part, but is edged out by a last-minute arrival to the auditions, the cool and confident Norman.

Meanwhile Sue’s best friend Donna is lurking somewhere in the youth club shadows, adding even more combustibles to this already turbo-charged nightmare of a hormonal stew.

Phew. Come on everybody, as Eddie Cochran once so astutely observed, are you keeping up with me?

If you’re not, then it sounds like you were probably there at the time and now most definitely beginning to show your age… This fabulous show came about thanks to the runaway success of the Dreamboats and Petticoats CD series of the same name. After spending several weeks at the number one spot in the UK Compilation Charts, and with over two million copies sold of the first album, the unexpected success of the albums series led the producers to consider a stage musical adaptation.

Music mogul Brian Berg saw the potential, got in touch with stage legends Bill Kenwright and Laurie Mansfield, who in turn contacted writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran… and the rest, as they say, is history.

And what a rock ‘n’ roll history this is… here are the definitive, classic tracks of the era from Roy Orbison, the Shadows, Eddie Cochran, Billy Fury and many more, the tunes that entranced and enraptured the first generation of rockers.

Let’s Dance, To Know Him Is To Love Him, Shaking All Over, Bobby’s Girl, Little Town Flirt, Only Sixteen, Runaround Sue, Happy Birthday Sweet 16, Let It Be Me, Great Pretender, C’mon Everybody, Let’s Twist Again – who can forget that tell-tale bacon and eggs crackle of needle on vinyl, hinting of the joy to come?

Yes, it’s all here in this emotional roller-coaster of a production, as the agonies and ecstasies of that first romance, the doubts and insecurities of adolescence, unrequited love and being admired from afar conspire to produce a stage show that is hotter than a 1960s coffee bar expresso.

Dreamboats and Petticoats runs at Malvern Theatres until Saturday (April 5). And to use the terminology of the times, be there or be square!