I was * invited to see Dirty Dancing on stage at New Theatre. For those that follow my theatre reviews will know I’m rubbish at seeing films! And guess what, I’ve never seen Dirty Dancing either!
From the theatre production I’ve taken the story to be a rich kid falling in love with a non rich kid who teaches dance in the 60’s 1963 in fact. Baby (Kira Malou) goes on holidays with her family, father Dr Jake Houseman ( lynden Edwards) mother Marjorie ( Lori Haley Fox) and her sister Lisa (Lizzie Ottley) she overhears the owner telling the staff to romance the daughters including the ugly ones. Billy ( Alex wheeler) takes Baby to the staffs secret dancing area. Baby finds out that Penny ( Simone Covele) is pregnant with Robbie’s baby. So baby without giving anything away asks her father for £250 for a backstreet abortion. In order to do this Baby has to stand in for the up coming performance and that’s where we see the love grow between Baby and Johnny ( Michael O’Reilly) When penny is sick after the abortion Baby gets her father to help, he thinks Jonny got her pregnant and tells Baby to stay away, she doesn’t and her father doesn’t speak to her. Johnny rejects a woman there and to get him back she decides to blame him for her husbands wallets going missing, the owner Max fires Johnny and Baby tells everyone she was actually with him and he wasn’t alone like he said. With Johnny gone Dr Houseman wishes Robbie well for medical school and then learns that he got penny pregnant he takes the money back. With that Johnny comes running back on stage to say ‘nobody puts Baby in a corner!)
The show started with Baby putting her books away to go on vacation. The dancers are in the background as the curtain lifts we see a holiday home, I thought the stage was really bright and had vibrant feel good feel to it, as if it were in some expensive golf course setting! I loved the way the house would spin for other scenes.
On the way home from the dance performance the screen drops and we see the shadow of a car with headlights on a road with the stars shining, Baby and Jonny talking about how she didn’t make the jump. I thought the screen coming down was quite cool!
As Baby and Johnnys dance lessons continue they work on the jump, now during this time the audience were all getting quite excited, apparently this is big in Dirty Dancing! Could hear a few mutters of ‘how will they do it with no water?’ For the second time the screen dropped again, and we had a blue skies and a forest, we could see Baby and Johnny behind balancing on wood, then the screen changed to a lake and that’s where they practice the jump. I thought again this was really clever! The audience ooohhhed and aaaahhhhed.
There was lots of songs that I knew and recognised but didn’t even know they were from the film! Of course songs like The time of my life, and hungry eyes I knew, but didn’t know Hey! Baby and Do you love me came from Dirty Dancing!
I enjoyed the show, I found it went quite quickly something I was a little worried about because I was really tired but it kept me awake! The music was catchy the dancing was great and there were quite a few funny moments. You could see the actors had good relationship and we’re enjoying what they were doing.
For the first time ever I’ve never seen a group of such rude women in the boxes, they were a little drunk and the ushers had to tell them a few times about phones and to keep it down, I felt sorry for the actors who must have heard them too, and If you were there last night I’ve been many times and never come across that.
From watching the show I’m not going to lie I don’t think I’ll be sitting down to watch the film anytime soon! But for those of you that enjoy Dirty Dancing you’d really enjoy The classic story on stage. I took my mate B with me, she loves Dirty Dancing and she really enjoyed it, she said it kept true to the story, there was one scene she looks at me and said this wasn’t in the film! So there are one or two adaptions. For me who didn’t know anything at all I didn’t have the anticipation of the jump or the famous saying! I’m still unsure of why the saying is so popular!
To see a little dry humping, Steamy snogging and a cheeky bare bum you can can get your tickets here show runs until Saturday 8th June 2019 and prices start from £13 .
* I was gifted my Tickets in exchange for an honest review, all words and views are my own.
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