Beloved “Dirty Dancing” succeeds at Fisher
The enjoyable Dirty Dancing, just settled in at the Fisher Theatre, is a jukebox musical that re-creates for the stage what was already a jukebox movie, featuring mostly rock and roll songs from the 50s and 60s .
Oh sure, it tells a story and everyone in the audience on press night seemed to know it. In the summer of 1963 college student Frances “Baby” Houseman, on vacation with her parents and sister at a resort in the Catskills, falls in love with Johnny Castle, the resort’s star dance instructor, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Overprotective Dad thinks Johnny is a bad guy, but Baby (and the audience) know he’s a good guy.
Along the way there’s a great deal of, yes, dancing, much of it admirably performed here by Christopher Tierney as Johnny (the Patrick Swayze role) and Gillian Abbott as Baby (the Jennifer Grey role) to a combination of recorded and live music.
This is not to imply that everyone else, as folks at the Catskills resort might put it, is chopped liver. Jenny Winton is engaging as Johnny’s longtime dance partner, Penny; Alex Scolari (a U-M graduate) is properly obnoxious as Baby’s sister, Lisa, and a hoot performing her awful Hawaiian number at the resort talent show.
As for people singing it straight, praise is due Jennlee Shallow and Doug Carpenter, powerful vocalists whose work—together and separately—provides musical high points.
Recordings include some favorites from the film, among them Mickey and Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange,” Bruce Channel’s “Hey! Baby!” and the Chantels’ “Maybe.”
For the most obvious of reasons, you probably don’t remember “This Land Is Your Land” or “We Shall Overcome” from the movie. They’ve been added here to acknowledge the civil rights movement, in full flower in 1963. Playwright Eleanor Bergstein’s heart is in the right place (she also wrote the movie) but she challenges credulity by having folks gather ‘round the campfire at dusk to listen to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, which was delivered in afternoon daylight.
First presented in Australia in 2004, the stage version of “Dirty Dancing” has been all over the world. The present incarnation is directed by James Powell, and benefits mightily from Stephen Brimson Lewis’ set design and Jon Driscoll’s video and projection design, which lends the proceedings an outdoor feel. Their work includes a stunning effect that makes Johnny and Baby appear to be practicing their dance routine in a lake.