Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Dirty Duncing
The current tour of “Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story On Stage,” or what not to do when re-creating one medium to another.
There is a difference between a “transfer” and a “transplant.” The former is when a piece of art is adapted from movie to stage, and there is some effort involved. What works in a movie does not necessarily work on stage. This is Basic Theatre 101.
The latter is when the movie is literally dumped onto a stage. Virtually word for word. Step by agonizing step. And it does not work.
Eleanor Bergstein wrote a very good script for the movie with several lines both iconic and significant, and, no, the one about putting Baby in a corner does not top the list.
Baby’s introduction “…it never occurred me to mind” spoke volumes in the movie, but on stage, Amanda Leigh Cobb (Baby) sounded like she was introducing herself at the beginning of “A Chorus Line.” “My name is Baby, and I was born in…” She was also defending herself against the relentless, vociferous music with its hammering bass line. She fared well as an actress, but was not directed to fully complete her transformation. Merely applying make-up and dressing differently do not equate finding oneself and commencing the growing-up process.
With Josef Brown as Johnny, we went from the ruggedness of Patrick Swayze to Brown’s pretty-boy musculature. Not necessarily an insult since he is a good dancer, but it would have been more satisfying to see him perform original choreography rather than mirroring that of the film’s. And if the actor hails from Australia, fine. Let Johnny originate from Australia. That would have been more acceptable than listening to a dude raised on the streets of New York but sports an Aussie accent, Mate.
Brita Lazenga as Penny was one heck of a dancer with rubber bones and legs that extended to the ceiling, and her material at least allowed her to execute some dramatic texture, but, alas, she was underutilized in Act Two.
The more frosting, the less there is cake. The complicated and complex set obviously masked the fact that the material was below standards. Just because someone was on a bridge in the movie does not mean we needed to see the tautological movements of the hydraulics, which were less exciting and more exhausting. Projected images were an insult to the audience: we got it. They were at a camp. We didn’t need to see movies of cabins and the lake. As if the projected images of the dancers (while they were dancing) were not distracting enough, it did not help that ten couples performed ten different dances, so the audience had no idea where to look. Even Baby and Johnny withdrew into the discombobulating mess. For the record, the dancers were quite good, or at least they appeared to be.
The final confrontation between Baby and her father lacked immediacy and urgency because instead of arguing at the table, Dr. H. needed to go to his chair, as in the movie. He and the chair rotated on the turntable. And Baby followed him. And she ambled on the turntable. By the time they argued, we forgot why.
All this for a chair.
The projected images of the water behind him were completely distracting and not required.
And the log needed to descend from Stage Right. Completely and languidly. And finally Baby and Johnny arrived. It would have been more fluid had the log entered on one side, while the actors entered on the other. This is called a Transition. A Transition is a change from one scene to the next, and this production suffered agonizingly sluggish ones.
Lisa’s comical Hawaiian song was cute in the movie because we caught the second half of it and were spared the first half. In this production, she dragged out the entire unfunny song. We were embarrassed for her.
The projected images of the field and water while Baby was learning the lift were unattractive.
Even the climactic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lift was, well, anticlimactic. This was due to the fact that the paint-by-numbers finale was unnecessarily laborious.
The production clocked in at just about three hours, and this pundit felt and heard every second.
22 years ago, the phrase “Dirty Dancing” was impressively metaphoric for both Baby’s maturation process and one’s exploration of the forbidden. Both concepts were defenestrated last night. And defenestrated quite well. The only thing dirty about last night’s performance was the fact that a buck was spent to make a buck, and the producers are expecting audiences to spend $150 to applaud familiarity.
Grade: D-
There is a difference between a “transfer” and a “transplant.” The former is when a piece of art is adapted from movie to stage, and there is some effort involved. What works in a movie does not necessarily work on stage. This is Basic Theatre 101.
The latter is when the movie is literally dumped onto a stage. Virtually word for word. Step by agonizing step. And it does not work.
Eleanor Bergstein wrote a very good script for the movie with several lines both iconic and significant, and, no, the one about putting Baby in a corner does not top the list.
Baby’s introduction “…it never occurred me to mind” spoke volumes in the movie, but on stage, Amanda Leigh Cobb (Baby) sounded like she was introducing herself at the beginning of “A Chorus Line.” “My name is Baby, and I was born in…” She was also defending herself against the relentless, vociferous music with its hammering bass line. She fared well as an actress, but was not directed to fully complete her transformation. Merely applying make-up and dressing differently do not equate finding oneself and commencing the growing-up process.
With Josef Brown as Johnny, we went from the ruggedness of Patrick Swayze to Brown’s pretty-boy musculature. Not necessarily an insult since he is a good dancer, but it would have been more satisfying to see him perform original choreography rather than mirroring that of the film’s. And if the actor hails from Australia, fine. Let Johnny originate from Australia. That would have been more acceptable than listening to a dude raised on the streets of New York but sports an Aussie accent, Mate.
Brita Lazenga as Penny was one heck of a dancer with rubber bones and legs that extended to the ceiling, and her material at least allowed her to execute some dramatic texture, but, alas, she was underutilized in Act Two.
The more frosting, the less there is cake. The complicated and complex set obviously masked the fact that the material was below standards. Just because someone was on a bridge in the movie does not mean we needed to see the tautological movements of the hydraulics, which were less exciting and more exhausting. Projected images were an insult to the audience: we got it. They were at a camp. We didn’t need to see movies of cabins and the lake. As if the projected images of the dancers (while they were dancing) were not distracting enough, it did not help that ten couples performed ten different dances, so the audience had no idea where to look. Even Baby and Johnny withdrew into the discombobulating mess. For the record, the dancers were quite good, or at least they appeared to be.
The final confrontation between Baby and her father lacked immediacy and urgency because instead of arguing at the table, Dr. H. needed to go to his chair, as in the movie. He and the chair rotated on the turntable. And Baby followed him. And she ambled on the turntable. By the time they argued, we forgot why.
All this for a chair.
The projected images of the water behind him were completely distracting and not required.
And the log needed to descend from Stage Right. Completely and languidly. And finally Baby and Johnny arrived. It would have been more fluid had the log entered on one side, while the actors entered on the other. This is called a Transition. A Transition is a change from one scene to the next, and this production suffered agonizingly sluggish ones.
Lisa’s comical Hawaiian song was cute in the movie because we caught the second half of it and were spared the first half. In this production, she dragged out the entire unfunny song. We were embarrassed for her.
The projected images of the field and water while Baby was learning the lift were unattractive.
Even the climactic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lift was, well, anticlimactic. This was due to the fact that the paint-by-numbers finale was unnecessarily laborious.
The production clocked in at just about three hours, and this pundit felt and heard every second.
22 years ago, the phrase “Dirty Dancing” was impressively metaphoric for both Baby’s maturation process and one’s exploration of the forbidden. Both concepts were defenestrated last night. And defenestrated quite well. The only thing dirty about last night’s performance was the fact that a buck was spent to make a buck, and the producers are expecting audiences to spend $150 to applaud familiarity.
Grade: D-
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