BWW Reviews: DIRTY DANCING, King's Theatre, Glasgow, August 28 2014

Although the story of Dirty Dancing is probably not one that needs explaining, I must confess that I wasn't actually familiar with it myself. Set in 1963, Frances "Baby" Houseman is staying at a holiday camp with her rather conservative family. She stumbles into the staff quarters and finds herself intruiged by the lifestyle of the working class dancers. While she doesn't fit in with them, they soon warm to her kindhearted nature but she knows that her parents will not approve of her new friends.

Baby develops a crush on dancer Johnny Castle and when his dancing partner is unable to perform at a show she volunteers to learn the routine and step in. What follows is a predictable love story - and lots of raunchy dancing.

The two leads were excellent; Roseanna Frascona really portrayed the naivete of Baby and Gareth Bailey is a very impressive dancer. A special mention should also go to Claire Rogers as Johnny's dance partner Penny who made the difficult choreography look effortless. I loved the set and was especially impressed with the projections used for forest and lake scenes. These scenes would have been difficult to transfer to stage and the exaggerated fake way they have decided to do it provides a lot of laughs.

I wouldn't quite class Dirty Dancing as a musical because there are only a couple of songs featured but they are performed by ensemble (and several hundred drunk Glaswegians) rather than the leads and backing tracks are also used. The audience were quite rowdy for a Thursday night and I imagine weekend performances will be slightly chaotic. I don't object to a lively crowd but there was some bad behaviour between mobile phone use (which the venue were swift to deal with) and shouting out during scenes. That aside, Dirty Dancing is just a fun night out that is pretty much guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Dirty Dancing runs at The King's Theatre in Glasgow until September 20th.

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