Cards on the table: I planned to love "Dirty Dancing." Screw theater criticism, I went as a fan. Like the rest of the hyped audience, my heart skipped a beat when the first familiar drumbeats of "Be My Baby" filled the theater and the suggestive silhouette of a dancing couple slinked across the scrim. Sadly it was a slow downhill cruise from there.
Basically a scene-by-scene reenactment of the cheesy 1980's movie, "Dirty Dancing" lacks the one transcendent quality that elevated the film: soul. To deliver a line like the famous "nobody puts baby in the corner," an actor has to wear his heart on his sleeve. Josef Brown as the iconic Johnny Castle just doesn't. The old lady in the lame gold pantsuit next to me couldn't take her eyes off his chest, but Brown did little to fill Patrick Swayze's shoes. Although a skilled dancer, Brown, mumbled/barked most of his lines while swallowing a distracting English accent. The rest of the cast, inspired dancers, spoke their lines like zombies, little humanity in sight. Two notable exceptions: a sincere Amanda Leigh Cobb out Baby-ed the original Baby, Jennifer Grey, and Ben Mingay (Billy Kostecki) boasted all the warmth Johnny Castle didn't.
Replete with video screens and a constantly morphing set, the show's technological aspects distracted. Although most scenes were creatively reconstructed onstage, underneath the thrill of recognition, nothing substantive took place. With an audience pleaser like "Dirty Dancing", substance is hardly the point; nevertheless, I couldn't help wishing that rather than merely paying homage, writer Eleanor Bergstien had created a stand-alone show.
Whether or not it's deserving, "Dirty Dancing" will undoubtedly succeed, and who could begrudge it? Who could sit unmoved as Johnny Castle throws open the theater doors, strides through the murmuring audience and takes his rightful place next to Baby onstage? A cold-hearted person, that's who, the sort to put Baby in the corner. And that's one thing I could never do.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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