Time of your life? What we thought of Dirty Dancing as it sashays into Sunderland Empire

I’d estimate 95% of a packed opening night audience of Dirty Dancing were female.

Judging from the whoops of excitement and the standing ovation many seemed to be having the time of their lives – but so were the fellas in attendance.

There aren’t many tickets left for the remaining performances this week but you won’t regret it if you snap one up.

Based on the 1987 film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey; and founded on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s own experience, the story is as simple as they come.

‘Baby’ falls in love with dance instructor Johnny.

Wrapped around this there is a veneer of social context in that there are passing references to life in this setting of 1963 - such as Martin Luther King who made his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech that year or President John F. Kennedy who was assassinated a few months later – but this musical makes no real pretence of being a piece of history.

Nonetheless, there are traces of George Bernard Shaw’s classic drama Pygmalion as the storyline matches a couple from totally different backgrounds, with one educating the other.

Here the ordinary working dancer Johnny is teaching rich girl Baby to dance, but just like Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion Johnny learns from the woman’s inner strength as Baby risks all to protect him.

However, it is the music, the dancing and the sensuality rather than the plot which enthrals the audience.

Dirty Dancing has some killer tunes including the show- stopping Oscar winner (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life. Just over half an hour into the performance ‘Hungry Eyes’ lifted what had been a pedestrian opening.

Robert Grose boosted the show with a very raunchy Love Man to start the second half in a musical which got better the longer it went on – despite far too many unnecessary set alterations that slowed the pace.

Ellie Fergusson as Penny Johnson was as elastic and lithe as you would expect of the first ever winner of The Greatest Dancer, while Asher Forth excelled in some of the big numbers, especially In The Still of the Night.

Undoubtedly though, the stars were Charley Varlet as the wholesome Baby and particularly Joel Benjamin as Johnny.

His sex appeal had plenty in the audience having the time of their lives - although had he revealed his bare backside (as Lewis Griffiths did in the 2017 production at the Empire) it might have been too much for some!

*Dirty Dancing is at the Sunderland Empire until Saturday 26 September 2026 with two shows on Friday and Saturday. Tickets available online now at ATGTickets.com/ Sunderland