@ Edinburgh Playhouse, until Sat 14 Mar 2015 and
@ His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, Tue 8 Sep – Sat 3 Oct 2015

Will there be ever a Fifty Shades of Grey: The Musical? Until then there’s Dirty Dancing – the great girls’ night out, guaranteed. This is a 21st century concoction of a 1980s chick flick (dubbed ‘Star Wars for girls’) set in 1963. The result is a fruity smoothie tasting of Chardonnay and chocolate.

Essentially it’s Romeo and Juliet, complete with bickering parents and sibling rivalry, but it’s neither Shakespeare nor an old Troy Donahue/Sandra Dee drive-in movie either. Audiences don’t come for the story nor for the music (other than the soaring anthem (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life) either.  It’s the dancing – dirty or otherwise – that everyone’s come to see. And there’s a life-affirming message that love conquers all, a strong man is hard to find and the losing of your innocence is always bittersweet.

The movie and the musical have something approaching cult status: both have been dismissed by sniffy critics while being embraced by audiences and becoming phenomenally popular. Johnny Castle (a pitch-perfect performance from the leggy Gareth Bailey) is the sexy tough guy with a soft centre who meets Baby Houseman (an adorable Roseanna Frascona) the rich man’s daughter. She thinks she ‘will never find a guy as good as my dad,’ but of course she does in Johnny who teaches Baby how to Mambo (and much else besides!).

Baby is a dance natural and when Johnny’s demonstration dance partner falls pregnant it’s up to Johnny to train Baby to be as good a dancer as Peggy (a magnificent Claire Rogers).

There’s a clever video projection design by Jon Driscoll, full of Freudian lakes and waving wheat fields. This and the choreography by Kate Champion keep the silkenly slender story aloft. The show is not exactly ‘only girls allowed’ but for its largely female audience it’s a naughty-but-nice slice of the forbidden or a welcome dose of non-invasive HRT depending which end of the age spectrum they are at. When Johnny appears with his shirt off the audience gives an appreciative, collective whoop. It’s all fabulous fun, if a bit forgettable.