David Bellan prepares for lift-off with this 1960s classic

There can’t have been a single person in the audience who had not seen the legendary film starring Jennifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, with its iconic dance sequences and sexually charged lift, waist deep in the water.

This is what they had come to see, but, like me, many must have wondered how you could make a musical out of a film that is essentially a drama, a coming-of-age tale, with some dance sequences along the way. The producers answer is to fill it with much more dance, and extra music taken from lots of sources. The result is a terrific show, with almost non-stop dancing and singing during the first half hour. It slows down a bit as the drama of Johnny the dancer, his pregnant partner and her naïve stand-in develops.

Those like me who experienced the 1960s, can tell you that the new freedom that they’re known for, only really started in about 1963, the year when this show is set. So the uptight morality of Baby’s provincial family is not surprising, since they’re stuck in the ’50s, and the whole atmosphere of this luxurious holiday-camp reeks of that decade.

The show has a lot more humour than the film, and constantly sends up the look and behaviour of the characters stuck in this time-warp, but it also has some very touching moments. Roseanna Frascona, an actress who has done a lot of serious work on the stage, is very moving in the scene where Baby falls out with her father, and in her love scene with Johnny (the excellent Gareth Bailey). There are hoots and screams and whistles from the audience when he takes off his shirt and leads Baby to his bed.

Earlier, there is a marvellous contrast between the visitors in evening wear dancing formally in the ballroom, and the wild abandon of the staff party which Baby gate-crashes.

Here, for the first time, she experiences the sexual thrill of being held close and sweatily by her lover-to -be. As she dances, pressed tight against Johnny, in one ecstatic moment she looks directly at us in her delight, a look of awakening, a look that says “this is what I want !”

The great moment of the lift in the water takes place very effectively on-stage, and the dancing finale, when Baby shows her family what she’s secretly been up to, is really exciting. My only criticism is that her family sit in deep shadow at the side of the stage, and you don’t get their reaction in this moment of revelation.

Dirty Dancing
New Theatre
Until Saturday, 3 Jan
Call 08448713020 or visit atgtickets.com/oxford