Baby, Stay in the Corner

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

“Dad!” I said into my phone—which, unlike my son, I did not get mugged of at school yesterday for the whateverth time—“Tell me if I’m wrong. I think we saw Evita at the Shubert and La Cage aux Folles at the Pantages.”

My dad considered it, thought back to the ’70s and ’80s, when the Schoenkopfs were all up in the theater’s grill and shit, and also my mom had fox fur coats and lunched at Le Dome. He said I was exactly right. The father-daughter date to La Cage (much funnier and more risque than its movie counterpart, The Birdcage) took place when I was 12 or 13 (I wore my white sailor dress and elementary-school-graduation pumps), and that is the last time I’d graced Hollywood’s delicious art deco theater. I told my dad that my boyfriend and I were on the way there to see Dirty Dancing. My boyfriend had tickets! I love tickets!

“Ah, Schmutzige Tanzen!” my dad said happily, and then we unpacked our equally threadbare German for a while before I reminded him in English that when the whole family went to see Schmutzige Tanzen when I was 14 or so, we came out of the Oaks Mall parking lot and he bitched, “All the girls got to look at Patrick Swayze, and what was there for the men? Jennifer Grey, and she’s homely, and she has no tits!” And that, 22 years later, is a direct quote. He didn’t even care that she was Joel Grey’s daughter!

But now? He says Dirty Dancing is one of his favorite movies of all time, a cinematic highlight of his life. He also now likes Billy Joel; he claims he always did. Also, he’s just about ready to pay for private school for my son, not liking the ongoing muggings and all, but I explained: the administration and super-nice (really!) campus police are now aware of the problem, and there is no chance in hell they’re going to let the literally only white kid at L.A. High continue to get targeted. Good lord, that would be some really bad press!

But just in case, I’m dispatching my tall and strong brother Cakeyboy and our very biggest and darkest-black friends to stand, in as surly a manner as possible, outside the gate and wait for my boy after school today. They have instructions to linger as long as it takes.

And so Dirty Dancing is at the Pantages, and I only saw part of it, because we left at the half. (I’m sure Legally Blonde: The Musical will be much more unterrible. Call Ticketmaster today!) So we missed what I’m sure was a rousing last 15 minutes? I don’t imagine it will be hard to find and TiVo any hour of any day even on basic cable.

It went on and on for fucking ever—the first act was an hour and a half; Variety says the whole thing clocks in at 2:20, plus intermission—and by the end my eyeballs were bleeding and my feelings were hurt. The choreography was bad. The segues and staging were clunky, loaded down with cars and hydraulics and an LED background that proved interesting and pretty at times but was mostly a distraction. There were no slo-mo, lingering closeups on sweaty midriffs and thighs. And I understand why they’d have to pick a terrible actor to play Johnny Swayze; they may care to trade acting ability and any stab at an American accent for dancing ability and hotness, and even the Real Slim Swayze maybe wasn’t known for his thespianity, but for God’s sake, at least he emoted! Our current pretty Aussie Johnny is as wooden as the production’s 40-foot log. But the late Jerry Orbach was neither hot nor danced in the movie; what earthly reason is there to cast a terrible actor as Baby’s daddy?

Everything about the play was atrocious, with the exception of Penny’s ass—she was danced by a ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet—which seemed to have hydraulics of its own.

I’ve seen worse plays—I once took my son to see Medea on Mother’s Day—and I expected only a slight charmer in Dirty Dancing, not a brilliant and baffling Mr. Marmalade. I’d hoped at least not to hate this one. I, as usual, was wrong.

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