Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage continues at Blackpool Opera House until 30 August and then tours until 3 June 2017.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Threatened protests by Musicians’ Union members to disrupt the opening night of the latest tour of this stage version of the 1987 box office film smash failed to materialise.
Their complaint is that the show has five musicians instead of eight employed on a previous tour and that it uses an ‘unauthorised’ recording of backing music.
The union claims the audiences are being sold short, the co-producers – Karl Sydow and Paul Elliott – retort that this is a “play with music” rather than a musical, adding that the leading characters don’t sing anyway.
And the audience? Well, on this showing (and helped by the fact that it’s the first time the stage version has been seen in the resort), they don’t care what’s going on behind the scenes just so long as much of the movie’s schmaltzy working-class boy meets middle-class girl and dances a lot story remains; most of the 1960s score is delivered in one way or another (some live, some pre-recorded, some by the original performers, some re-recorded); and that every now and again hunky Lewis Griffths (playing Johnny Castle very much a la Patrick Swayze’s iconic original) gets much of his kit off.
Having pretty much kickstarted the big screen dancing jukebox genre, the stage show – carefully billed as Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage and not referred to as a musical in the show’s official advance publicity – has morphed into a sort of cross between Mamma Mia! and The Full Monty (without the suntans and steelworkers).
The action is set in 1963 – the end of an era – when the Civil Rights Movement was young (Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech in the August), the Peace Movement was considered revolutionary, the British Beat Invasion was just booking its airline tickets to the USA and well-off teens were still accompanying their parents to Catskill hotel retreats where they learnt the fox trot and cha cha cha, sat round campfires and played Simon Says.
Enter stage right Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman, an innocent with a mind of her own. Katie Hartland, making her professional musical theatre debut having graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama last year, just about escapes from Jennifer Gray’s original portrayal to emerge with deserved cheers at the long-awaited dancing lift.
It’s Griffiths though who takes much of the spotlight – particularly when decked in shades, cut off T-shirt and leather jacket – and with an impressive CV of touring musicals already under his belt, there’s clearly more to him than a rippling six-pack and some impressive moves.
Leggy Carlie Milner also cuts quite a caper as dancer Penny Johnson and Lizzie Ottley (as Baby’s sister Lisa) deserves her huge cheer for her hula solo.
The visible stage staff work hard to keep the scenes flowing for the refreshingly large cast – and with £5 million already banked at the box office, it seems nobody is putting baby in the corner just yet.
Robin Duke
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