Dirty Dancing bops to its own beat in LR
While the downtown St. Patrick’s Day parade crowd witnessed Celtic dancing, audiences at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Performance Hall focused on footwork of
another kind: Dirty Dancing. Dirty Dancing — The Classic Story on Stage, the touring production that opened with two shows Saturday, was light on its feet.
True to the 1987 film, the two-hour-show (add to that a 20-minute intermission) hit every line, every lift, and, yes, every problematic plot point. The story about underage Frances “Baby” Houseman becoming dance partners — and ultimately romantic partners — with hunky, older dance instructor Johnny Castle (all so his dance partner Penny can take time off for an illegal abortion that Baby tricks her doctor dad into financing) during a 1963 family vacation in the Catskills just seems creepier three decades later.
But the capable cast, stirring choreography and catchy retro tunes make Dancing wholly digestible and downright delightful. Sparse transportable set pieces kept action moving and kept the attention on the performers, backed by an eight-piece orchestra.
Co-leading a company of 24, Kaleigh Courts was endearing in the role as Baby, balancing the right comingof-age combination of awkwardness and maturity.
While he might look more Peyton Manning than the late Patrick Swayze, actor Aaron Patrick Craven played Johnny with swagger. And the man can move, especially in his numbers with leggy Anais Blake (Penny), and in the triumphant final number, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”
Added scenes and songs didn’t memorably add to the production. Though well-intentioned, a Martin Luther King moment — when all the white ritzy resort guests abandon their croquet and golf plans to take in the “I Have a Dream” speech and then all sing “This Land is Your Land/We Shall Overcome” — seemed particularly forced.
Nobody puts Baby in a corner … and nobody puts social consciousness in a musical about shimmying.
Dirty Dancing — The Classic Story on Stage will be performed again at 2 and 7:30 p.m. today at Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock. Tickets are $28-$77 plus fees, and can be purchased by calling (501) 244-8800 or visiting ticketmaster.com.