Dirty Dancing at the Pantages Hollywood
Hey everyone,
On Wednesday evening I went out for the evening with a friend in Hollywood. We went to the W Hotel for dinner before heading to the Pantages Theatre to watch Dirty Dancing. Walking into the theatre I was amazed by the décor of the place, it was absolutely beautiful. It was decorated with sky high ceilings with grand chandeliers hanging in every corner of the hall. As I walked through the stalls in the auditorium to get my seat I noticed large gold statues by either side of the wall and many red plush seats. It was just my luck that I had been sat behind probably the tallest person in the whole theatre, but luckily the seats were quite close so I was able to manuover my head around him.
I had originally seen the west end version of Dirty Dancing a few years back at the Piccadilly Theatre in London and was extremely disappointed so I was hoping that the Hollywood version would be much better.
The first thing that I will discus in my review is the set structure of the show. I was very disappointed with this, I don't think that the set designer had too much of an imagination when designing it because I felt that he or she had obviously just taken the easy option. Every scene used a computerized background and instead of making it look innovative or modern, it just made it look boring. For instance, I think it would have looked much better with minimal set and more props that could actually be handled rather than a large picture which is supposedly meant to look like cabins or a lake or a golf pitch.
There was one scene in particular when the Johnny and Baby are practicing their dance in the water that I thought looked particularly tacky. During this scene in order to make it look as if the characters were in deep water, a huge screen of a lake popped up. It was supposedly meant to look as if they were jumping around in the water and every time they swished their hair back the would be a loud sound effect. It was almost comical and the audience began laughing, not because it was clever but mainly because it just looked like the scene was being mocked. I personally prefer simple classic built sets rather than backgrounds and especially computerized ones because I feel that this can otherwise take away from the magic of what real theatre brings to an audience. If I was interested in seeing a screen I would have much rather watched the movie in the comfort of my own home.
Next I am going to move on to the acting. The two main characters Johnny and Baby are supposed to carry the show. If we don't love these characters then there is no point in having a show in the first place. Actress Gillian Abbott who played baby did a great job at embodying the character, the only bad thing about her performance is that she was clearly a good dancer, whilst the character is supposed to be a bad dancer. This took away from the character and instead of looking realistic it came across comical and mocking. I felt that if she was more committed to the role it could have been a stronger performance. As for the other main character I was really unimpressed with actor Christopher Tierney Playing the role of Johnny. Looks wise he wasn't bad and I could see the resemblance to the character and the reason he could have been cast, he even had that slight arrogance about him that Patrick Swayze had in the movie, which really works for the character. The one issue I had with him was the fact that not once did he look interested in what he was doing or saying. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I couldn't seem to see any difference between when he was happy, sad, or angry. Throughout the whole show he barely showed any expression on his face, he was just completely wooden and recited his lines as if he was reading off a sheet of paper. The most important thing of the show should be the sexual chemistry between the characters but there was absolutely none between the two of them. If you can't feel it, fake it, but even that didn't seem to work for them. I could see actress Gillian committing more to this but actor Chriatopher Jair seemed more interested in himself and his dancing than the character which was right in front of him. My acting teacher always tells us in every scene you are there for the other person and everything you do if for the other character, however, I could blatantly see that everything he was doing was for himself. To show the audience 'look what I can do'. I really wanted to feel the sexual tension between them and I was really disappointed by this.
I think actress playing Penny was fantastic. Not only was she a great dancer, she had captured the character to perfection. You could tell she knew who the character was and this enabled her to embody her with perfection. I also thought that the ensemble did a great job. All the actors remained in character from start to finish and reacted to every person and everything that was happening on stage. The dancing was extremely racey but was definitely the the best part of the show.
I really liked the fact that we were also shown other relationships blossoming between characters that were not shown in the film.
Overall I would give the show 3 stars.
On Wednesday evening I went out for the evening with a friend in Hollywood. We went to the W Hotel for dinner before heading to the Pantages Theatre to watch Dirty Dancing. Walking into the theatre I was amazed by the décor of the place, it was absolutely beautiful. It was decorated with sky high ceilings with grand chandeliers hanging in every corner of the hall. As I walked through the stalls in the auditorium to get my seat I noticed large gold statues by either side of the wall and many red plush seats. It was just my luck that I had been sat behind probably the tallest person in the whole theatre, but luckily the seats were quite close so I was able to manuover my head around him.
I had originally seen the west end version of Dirty Dancing a few years back at the Piccadilly Theatre in London and was extremely disappointed so I was hoping that the Hollywood version would be much better.
The first thing that I will discus in my review is the set structure of the show. I was very disappointed with this, I don't think that the set designer had too much of an imagination when designing it because I felt that he or she had obviously just taken the easy option. Every scene used a computerized background and instead of making it look innovative or modern, it just made it look boring. For instance, I think it would have looked much better with minimal set and more props that could actually be handled rather than a large picture which is supposedly meant to look like cabins or a lake or a golf pitch.
There was one scene in particular when the Johnny and Baby are practicing their dance in the water that I thought looked particularly tacky. During this scene in order to make it look as if the characters were in deep water, a huge screen of a lake popped up. It was supposedly meant to look as if they were jumping around in the water and every time they swished their hair back the would be a loud sound effect. It was almost comical and the audience began laughing, not because it was clever but mainly because it just looked like the scene was being mocked. I personally prefer simple classic built sets rather than backgrounds and especially computerized ones because I feel that this can otherwise take away from the magic of what real theatre brings to an audience. If I was interested in seeing a screen I would have much rather watched the movie in the comfort of my own home.
Next I am going to move on to the acting. The two main characters Johnny and Baby are supposed to carry the show. If we don't love these characters then there is no point in having a show in the first place. Actress Gillian Abbott who played baby did a great job at embodying the character, the only bad thing about her performance is that she was clearly a good dancer, whilst the character is supposed to be a bad dancer. This took away from the character and instead of looking realistic it came across comical and mocking. I felt that if she was more committed to the role it could have been a stronger performance. As for the other main character I was really unimpressed with actor Christopher Tierney Playing the role of Johnny. Looks wise he wasn't bad and I could see the resemblance to the character and the reason he could have been cast, he even had that slight arrogance about him that Patrick Swayze had in the movie, which really works for the character. The one issue I had with him was the fact that not once did he look interested in what he was doing or saying. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I couldn't seem to see any difference between when he was happy, sad, or angry. Throughout the whole show he barely showed any expression on his face, he was just completely wooden and recited his lines as if he was reading off a sheet of paper. The most important thing of the show should be the sexual chemistry between the characters but there was absolutely none between the two of them. If you can't feel it, fake it, but even that didn't seem to work for them. I could see actress Gillian committing more to this but actor Chriatopher Jair seemed more interested in himself and his dancing than the character which was right in front of him. My acting teacher always tells us in every scene you are there for the other person and everything you do if for the other character, however, I could blatantly see that everything he was doing was for himself. To show the audience 'look what I can do'. I really wanted to feel the sexual tension between them and I was really disappointed by this.
I think actress playing Penny was fantastic. Not only was she a great dancer, she had captured the character to perfection. You could tell she knew who the character was and this enabled her to embody her with perfection. I also thought that the ensemble did a great job. All the actors remained in character from start to finish and reacted to every person and everything that was happening on stage. The dancing was extremely racey but was definitely the the best part of the show.
I really liked the fact that we were also shown other relationships blossoming between characters that were not shown in the film.
Overall I would give the show 3 stars.
A GREAT SPELL CASTER (DR. EMU) THAT HELP ME BRING BACK MY EX GIRLFRIEND.
ReplyDeleteAm so happy to testify about a great spell caster that helped me when all hope was lost for me to unite with my ex-girlfriend that I love so much. I had a girlfriend that love me so much but something terrible happen to our relationship one afternoon when her friend that was always trying to get to me was trying to force me to make love to her just because she was been jealous of her friend that i was dating and on the scene my girlfriend just walk in and she thought we had something special doing together, i tried to explain things to her that her friend always do this whenever she is not with me and i always refuse her but i never told her because i did not want the both of them to be enemies to each other but she never believed me. She broke up with me and I tried times without numbers to make her believe me but she never believed me until one day i heard about the DR. EMU and I emailed him and he replied to me so kindly and helped me get back my lovely relationship that was already gone for two months.
Email him at: Emutemple@gmail.com
Call or Whats-app him: +2347012841542