The voice of the people, not the critics…..

With over £12million in the advance box office already, as I noted yesterday, seldom can a show have been quite as critic-proof as Dirty Dancing; and in any case, as a friend of mine once sagely remarked, “You can’t fight a hit”. Few of us have even tried to do so on this occasion, and as I also remarked yesterday, it has a double nostalgic familiarity to spread content.

At prices that hit a staggering £59.50 for weekend performances, the public want that kind of certainty. And if the vox pops that litter the new London free papers are anything to go by, it doesn’t matter what we say, anyway. In the London Paper, one punter, 29-year-old Helen Weavis, says, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. The dancing was fantastic – I was blown away.” And another, 31-year-old Caroline Jones, comments, “I loved every minute. I’d definitely come back – I’ll bring my whole family including my little baby, who needs to be initiated” (but maybe she’ll think again when she discovers there are no kids discounts).

Which isn’t to say that the critical response has been openly hostile – far from it. If reviews to massage the egos of the creative team were required – and that seems to the principal reason for them at all on this occasion – they will be taking comfort from the very kind reception of papers like The Times and Evening Standard (both four stars), The Independent (“In general, this is a very enjoyable evening”).

But what’s always quite refreshing about London is that – between the overnight daily reviews, the Sundays, the magazines and the websites – we have so many critical voices that no single source of them dominates. However, I’m a little puzzled by the efforts of Associated’s Standard Lite to contradict itself. While a great deal of the paper, of course, is re-purposed from the paid-for edition, they have a strange practice of employing their own theatre reviewers, but yesterday chose to ‘balance’ their own 2-star notice from Nina Caplan with a reprint for Standard critic Nicholas de Jongh’s four-star rave. Which, ultimately, proves that it’s the public who will have decide for themselves; and since they already have, neither verdict will actually matter. (Head to the listings page of the Standard Lite, where the Backstage Blogs appear and you’ll find that they put two contrasting public opinions back-to-back for it, too – one calling it “the best show in London!” that also says it is “the stuff that hen nights are made of” — — not exactly an endorsement but probably a good commercial reality — while the other points out another possible truth: “I didn’t like this much but my girlfriend did… I don’t think the audience were that interested in the performance as much as they were in singing along.”