by Becky T
Originally published in Currents April/May 2006

The European premiere of the musical version of Dirty Dancing was March 26 in Hamburg. Based on the 1987 film of the same name, Martin van Bentem and Ina Trabesinger appear as clones of the original characters, Johnny and Baby, originally created by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

If you have been locked in a cave the last 20 years and don't know the story: Baby Houseman her older sister and their parents are relaxing at a family resort in the Catskill Mountains in 1963. Baby meets bad boy Johnny. He teaches her to dance the meringue and she teaches him self-respect. Side plots are abortion, pick pockets, moral indignation, prejudice, the civil rights movement, and supporting your ideals. The stars are excellent considering that they had little room for individual interpretations. Also very good are Rachel Marshall as Penny and Franziska Lessing as Lisa Houseman. Since we are being picky about a cloned version of the film, Martin Haberger and Masha Karell (a German couple in real life, who live near Hamburg) are too short to play the Houseman parents. Director is Paul Garrington from England. The creator of the film, Eleanor Bergstein, personally oversaw the production.

The set (constructed by Studio Hamburg) is almost a character in its own right. Scenes change quickly from the restaurant to the cabins of the employees to a rain storm to a vintage Chevrolet to a 40-foot tree trunk - all copied from the original film as nearly as it is possible to go from one medium to the next. The producers managed to squeeze in 51 songs from the 60s and the 80s, both taped and live, in English and in German, which makes me think that songs were added, or do you remember "Teenager in Love," "Stay," "Save the last dance for me," "I feel like a Morning Star," or "In the Still of the Night" from the film version? Often I never knew whether the song was live or taped, except sometimes a live combo was on stage.

The need to copy is both the strength and weakness of the musical. I wasn't the only member of the audience with an invisible script in my lap, checking off the film's scenes as appeared in the Hamburg production. I wasn't disappointed, but there were no surprises. We were all waiting for the "money moment" when Johnny says, "My baby belongs to me" (how old-fashioned!), not to mention the the moment where Baby, leaps into Johnny's arms to complete a dance step which had eluded her in the past. Other recent musicals based on films such as The Producers, The Lion King, and even the predecessor in this theater, Dance of the Vampires, did not slavishly adhere to each tiny detail in the original film. As a result there were surprises, improvements, songs added or deleted, and a new work of art evolved. This Dirty Dancing successfully mirrors the film so closely that Swayze could suddenly materialize, 20 years younger, and nobody would notice. In fact, the next day I checked out the DVD in order to re-watch the film for the 10th time: Detective Tan, checking for "irregularities."

As in really old-fashioned musicals like Carousel, there is much dialog, this time in good German with hardly a foreign accent to be heard in spite of the international cast from Holland, Austria, England, Germany, etc. Still non-German speakers might lose the thread, unless they have memorized the film (not an unusual expectation). The lead actors never sing; it's enough to dance heavenly and they do.

Hamburg joins Sydney, Australia, as one of two world stages to perform this musical and Hamburgers have lived up to the city's reputation of Germany's "musical city" with a record pre-ticket sales of 200,000. At Neue Flora Theater, Stresemannstr. 159a, on Wed 18:30, Thu/Fri 20:00, Sat 15/20:00, and So 14/19:00. Euro 27,30 to 98,89. Call 018054444 or 431650 or see www.stage-entertainment.de or go to any Theaterkasse.