Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh
Melissa Firlit recreates Dirty Dancing in a one-woman show that mixes trivia, personal memories and a singalong
Dirty Dancing was the first VHS in our house: snazzy purple box, pure 80s brushstroke title, alluring 15 certificate – and all that slo-mo, black-and-white grinding to the Ronettes before it even begins. I’m not the only one who remembers their first viewing. Melissa Firlit watched the film again and again. Now she recreates the whole thing, from the drive to the Catskills resort, to Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s lift, in this fizzy one-woman show.
With a coat stand for costumes and a box of props (yes, she’s carried a watermelon), Firlit strikes a fangirl pose as she whirls us through the film that “changed the trajectory of all films for ever forward”. Going scene by scene, sometimes line by line (“nobody puts Baby in a corner!”), she steps through each mambo, salsa, cha-cha-cha and merengue, with movement direction by Kristyn Pope. Firlit salutes Cynthia Rhodes’ lightning legs, recruits audience members to teach them the Swayze swivel and leads us in a slow handclap for smarmy Neil (played on screen by Lonny Price, who co-directs the fringe musical The Real Kyle McCarren across town).
