Photo by Matthew Murphy
Turning hit movies into touring stage productions has become a predictable way to get audiences into theaters and fill the seats. There’s no guarantee for quality as long as the audience can follow the storyline. And such is the case with Dirty Dancing, which had a six-day run at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.
This production focused on the dancing, while the hit tunes got piped in (Eric Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes”) or played by the eight-piece orchestra. The book by Eleanor Bergstein rushed past, trying to cram in so many points from the movie. The nearly three-hour show had a disjointed feel, reducing characters to one-dimensional caricatures with snippets of the movie’s hit soundtrack simmering underneath as elevator muzak.
The best moments were the intimate scenes between Christopher Tierney’s studly Johnny Castle (the Patrick Swayze role) and Gillian Abbott’s coming-of-age Frances “Baby” Houseman (the movie’s Jennifer Grey). They generate the “down and (ahem) dirty” dance moves, vertically and horizontally speaking.
Since Dirty Dancing is all about the dance moves, the youthful, exuberant cast makes the show exciting to watch, as do the few vocal standouts: Doug Carpenter’s soulful “In the Still of the Night (I’ll Remember)” and the amazing Jennlee Shallow anytime she sings, a true highpoint of this production.
