Grease is so funny and a big joke, if you will, to us as audience members because it's for-real and serious stuff to the characters. I find that when actors play the archetypes (which I've seen in many productions of Grease) as opposed to working objectives and being the characters and finding truth, much of the humor is lost, and that's not what acting is.
This show is much like a clown, in a sense. A clown is not a funny person. A clown has an objective but there are obstacles after obstacles that keep him from achieving his objective. That is why we laugh- he seriously wants something so bad but he keeps failing at getting it. Relationships, Rizzo getting knocked up, rumbles with the Flaming Dukes- these are all really serious things to the Greasers, and we laugh because we know now that everything's not a big deal, the Greasers aren't as cool as they think they are, etc., but it's funny because they think they are hot stuff and everything is so dramatic (which is just like real-life high school today), and that's why it's funny and satirical- it shows how the drama that's incorporated with hormones and high-schoolers hasn't changed in fifty years and those that went to high school in the 50's can laugh at themselves for how ridiculous they were, just like in fifty years, I'm sure we'll be laughing at how ridiculous we all were in 2007.
So... Max should be taking this show seriously as an actor, however, I have not seen the revival, so I can't comment on his performance or that particular production as a whole.
And no, it does not strike me as a bold-faced lie, Midnight Radio. And even if it is, so what? It's still an interesting story and it'd be interesting to see what comes out of that in terms of relationship development when worked into the show. So thank you Neverandy, your input has been appreciated.
"I believe that art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, to engage in a constant search for the truth."
- Barbra Streisand