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‘Baby’ takes the stage
By John Benson
For most folks, the popular film “Dirty Dancing” is the type of guilty-pleasure movie that requires you to stick around whenever you come across it on the cable.
Upon closer inspection, the 1987 flick, with its sing-along tunes and empowering message, actually seems like it should have first existed as a Broadway musical before Hollywood bought up its rights and produced it for the masses.
Perhaps that’s why the stage production “Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story,” which makes its Cleveland premiere as part of the KeyBank Broadway Series March 3 through 22 at PlayhouseSquare’s Connor Theatre, makes so much sense.
“Absolutely right, that’s spot-on,” said Conrad Helfrich, music supervisor for the show, calling from Australia. “When you think about it, you look at everything that movie had, it should be on stage.
“That was the first thing that jumped out to me — there wasn’t a stage production. When we started in 2004, Eleanor Bergstein — the creator of the movie – came to Australia. What she had was the film script and a whole pile of CDs. We started from scratch to see what from the film would work on stage and what wouldn’t work.”
Helfrich said he was surprised to find that every scene in the movie translated perfectly to the stage, as well as other added elements that helped explain the narrative a bit better.
“Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story” was first performed at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia, in November 2004. Two years later, it landed in Europe, where it broke records for achieving the highest advance.
What can we say, audiences have a love affair with Frances “Baby” Houseman and dance instructor Johnny Castle, as well as the fabulous soundtrack that includes hits “Hungry Eyes,” “Hey Baby,” “Do You Love Me?” and, of course, “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life.”
In fact, considering all of the popular songs, the soundtrack has a jukebox musical feeling, which is something Helfrich said early on the creators of the stage production wanted to avoid.
“We didn’t achieve it in the early stages,” Helfrich said. “Every piece of music in the film was basically coming from a record player or radio or it was background music. And that works really well in a movie format but we started off doing the same thing.
“I actually felt we needed to bring a live element to work in a theater as opposed to cinema. It took a while to change the proportion. But now what happens in the show is that 90 percent of the music the audience hears is live by a band.”
Naturally, the centerpiece of the movie is the iconic “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life,” as well as instantly recognizable dialogue. The latter includes the memorable, and often quoted, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
When Helfrich was asked if it’s OK if we put Baby in a corner, he laughed. “She is in the corner, and she even gets put in a corner onstage. And yes, whenever that line gets uttered — even in Germany in a different language — audiences explode.”