In 2007, the wildly successful musical Dirty Dancing sashayed its way to Toronto’s popular stage and the buzz shows no sign of quieting. The play is based on the 1987 smashing big screen flick with the same name. At the time, it emerged as a low budget film that became a blockbuster – earning over $300 million worldwide and with a soundtrack that merited two multi-platinum albums. One song “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy for the Best Duet.
Written by Eleanor Bergstein, Dirty Dancing is a love story set in 1963 between an upper-class, college bound vacationer and a working class member of the resort staff. Seventeen years old Jane Baby Houseman – the girl with two left feet -falls in love with Johnny, a professional dancer from the wrong side of the tracks. Naturally, the course of true love fails to run smoothly when Dr. Houseman, Baby’s dad thinks the young man is unfit for his daughter – mistakenly believing he has fathered a child with his dance partner Penny Johnson. The play’s scenery moves with the cast, creating fluidity in the performance. Pieces of the stage rise up and revolve to whisk the characters from one setting to another. The video backdrops of sweeping forests, torrential rainstorms, winding mountain highways and even a lake are all spectacular. Even the sky changes from a mellow blue in the morning to the sharp pinks of sunset. Kudos to set designer Stephen Brimson Lewis! The theater’s surround sound system completes the effect as crickets gently hum in the background during nightfall. Kate Champion’s choreography is a display of raw athleticism, supple grace and balletic elegance.
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