AISLE SAY Toronto
DIRTY DANCING
Written by Eleanor Bergstein
Directed by James Powell
Through February 2009
Royal Alexandra Thatre
www.Mirvish.com
Reviewed by Robin Breon
Nobody puts
Baby in a cornernot even this
reviewer.
Even as the well hyped Jersey Boys opened in Toronto, I
found myself drawn to this show that I had so studiously avoided yea
these many
months since the Toronto opening in November of last year. Perhaps it
was the
announcement that the supremely gifted Ashley
Leggat was set to take over the
role of "Baby" Houseman and that two former stars of the Royal
Winnipeg Ballet
and the National Ballet of Canada
(Johnny
Wright and Julie Hay)
would be
playing the roles of Penny and Johnny respectively that drew me to it
(due to
the physical demands of the lead dancer role of Johnny Castle, Wright
will
split performances with Jake Simons who has been with the show since
its
opening). This combined with the fact that Mirvish
Productions just released a
new block of tickets that will take the run of the show into February
made a
compelling argument to check it out.
Dirty Dancing,
the
musical
(as nearly everyone on the
planet knows by now) is based on the movie by the same name and is the
story of
a summer love affair between the uncoordinated ugly duckling, "Baby"
Houseman
(played by Monica West in the
performance I saw) and the handsome working class
summer-stud boyfriend, the dirty dancer himself, Johnny Castle (Jake Simons)
who is employed as a dance instructor by Kellerman's, a resort in the
Catskills. As Baby's affluent Jewish family recoils at the growing
relationship,
we watch as Baby and the bf grow in maturity and respect for one
another.
The musical is a little softer than the
movie (Jerry
Orbach was a tougher Dr. Jake Houseman in the film) and the second act
is taken
up mostly with the resort's end of season show that leads to the final
climactic Billy Elliot-like moment in which Baby comes into her own as
a dancer
and a woman. Perhaps it was karma that had me going in to see this show
the
same week I saw Jersey Boys
in preview uptown at the Toronto Centre for the
Arts. Both shows are of the same period and employ music that is
contemporaneous. In the case of JB
it is of course the songbook of the
immensely talented Four Seasons that comprises the musical score.
Dirty
Dancing utilizes a pastiche of tunes56 of them
to be exactthat are sung by the cast as backgrounders to the action
taking
place on stage. But within this pastiche is a subtle but critical
difference to
the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. One story seeks to
acknowledge
the historic epic in which it lives and the other seems to want to
distance
itself from it, or at the very least, to diminish it.
So along with all of the wonderful dance
tunes of the
period (Do You Love Me, Bsame
Mucho,
Mama
Said,
etc.) we also hear
snippets of
Viva
la Quince Brigada, This
Land
is Your Land and We Shall Overcome
which
enhances one of the subplots of the storyline that embraces the civil
rights
movement and deals with abortion and other issues of the day in a way
that
allows the story as a whole to be active and reflexive in its social
consciousness without becoming cloying or maudlin. I would submit that
this
element forms the conscience of the show or more precisely, its heart
and is
partly responsible for the show's (as well as the film's) ongoing
success.
The infusion of new leads into the Toronto
production
comes at a good time. The cast I saw was certainly tired but not
without an
internal stamina that continues to drive it forward along with an
excellent
scene design that includes a double revolve set that evokes period,
place and
no small amount of nostalgia for mothers, sisters and daughters who
come in
great numbers to relive the time of their lives with an emotional
summer of
flirty dancing.
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