Review: Dirty Dancing at The Lyceum, Sheffield

For anyone, then, who’s been able to quote verbatim its dialogue since their teenage years, for whom the phrase ‘I carried a watermelon’ encapsulates swallow-me-up embarrassment, the theatrical version should be heaven.

And for the most part it is: an exact replica of the movie, played out live.

The characters have evidently been cast first and foremost for their looks as well as their dancing ability – all are strikingly similar in appearance to their on-screen counterparts.

The dialogue is largely identical – cue whoops of acknowledgement from the audience for so many of the film’s numerous iconic lines – and the costumes are carefully replicated for the stage.

It’s nostalgic, familiar and feel-good, the perfect girls’ night out – and, just as in the film, the soundtrack is matchless and the dancing sizzlingly spectacular.

Which does beg the question, how do you improve on perfection?

The 1987 movie, cherished by fans for 36 years, is already flawless. What can a stage version bring to enhance something that needs no improvement?

Kira Malou as Baby, and Michael O’Reilly as brooding Johnny, the holidaymaker and the dance instructor at Camp Kellerman’s in the summer of ‘63, are excellent in the roles they’ve played in the West End as well as on this national tour – they look the part, they deliver the same lines in the same way as in the film, they dance beautifully…

But they do also make you realise the magical on-screen chemistry between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze – those little touches, those smouldering moments of lingering eye contact – was some kind of wonderful.

The storyline – a social and civil rights message interwoven subtly between the steamy dance scenes and the falling in love – is never clunky or heavy-handed in the film. But on stage new scenes have been added which labour the point. They feel virtue-signalling and self-conscious, padding that does little but interrupt the flow.

Some of the scenes are played for laughs: a raised eyebrow here, a nod to the audience there, the dance practise on the log necessarily comedic since a lake is presumably not easy to replicate in the theatre – but it jars a little, when the rest of the production is so facsimile-faithful to the film.

Not that it matters. The diehard fans flocking to see their favourite movie brought to life on the stage are guaranteed to have the time of their lives – and the lift at the end is just as exhilarating as it is on the silver screen.

• Dirty Dancing is at The Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday