Photos: Dirty Dancing\’s No Longer a West End Baby

The cast of screen-to-stage musical Dirty Dancing were last night celebrating the show’s second birthday in the West End, where it’s been running at the Aldwych Theatre since 24 October 2006 (previews from 29 September), and is currently booking until 17 October 2009.

The company, which recently welcomed a new cast (See News, 1 Oct 2008), is led by former Royal Ballet dancer Martin Harvey as Johnny Castle and Leanne Rowe making her stage debut as Baby Houseman. Nadia Coote continues in the role of Penny, which she originated on stage in both Australia and London.

Set at an upmarket American holiday camp called Kellerman’s in the 1960s, the 1987 film of Dirty Dancing starred Jennifer Grey as the teenaged Baby Houseman who falls in love with the camp’s working class dance instructor Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze, whose climactic line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”, has since become a classic.

Dirty Dancing has been adapted for the stage by the film’s screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein, who based the story’s setting on her own childhood experiences of family holidays in America’s Catskill Mountains. The musical had its world premiere in Sydney in 2004.

TO SCROLL THROUGH ALL OF THE DIRTY DANCING 2ND BIRTHDAY PHOTOS, JUST CLICK ON THE “NEXT >” LINKS BELOW THE FOLLOWING FRAME.

Other current cast members are David Firth (as Max Kellerman), Robin Chalk (Neil Kellerman) and Josie Kidd (Mrs Schumacher). The ensemble is completed by Jacquie Biggs, Wayne Anthony Cole, Cassandra Compton, Neisha-yen Jones, Toussaint Meghie, Sandy Moffat, Callum Powell (who joins his sister Stephanie Powell), Cleopatra Royer, Kelly Smith, Zizi Strallen, Elia Lo Tauro, Hannah Vassallo and Alan Vincent (both previously with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures in Motion Pictures), Maria Ward, Ed White and Karen Williams.

– by Theo Bosanquet