I carried a watermelon

After another day of no job news and a protracted battle with the date field in an Excel spreadsheeet that a) almost drove me to douse my computer in nail varnish remover and set fire to it and b) was nearly responsible for the tragic and premature end of my relationship, I needed a break.

Fortunately, a suitable distraction had been in the pipeline since mid-September last year, when, with barely-concealed glee, three of us had booked our tickets for Dirty Dancing: The Musical. And last night, after a five month wait peppered with countdown emails bursting with excitement and key quotations, the long-awaited event was now imminent. In retrospect, the hastily-imbibed bottles of white wine at dinner were a virtual pre-requisite for the joyous pantomime we witnessed: as the disappointing Johnny-alike, complete with possible hairpiece, entered the stage for the first time wearing his terrible Raybans and tight black vest, the packed crowd obediently gasped and oohed on cue, while Robbie the-waiter-who-knocked-up-Penny received reliable boos and hisses from start to finish. I am unwilling to advocate alcohol as a necessity but I think it's fair to suggest that any sober audience members would possibly have struggled to get into the spirit of the night in quite the same way.

The acting was delightfully atrocious, exactly what was demanded from the kitsch production. Any Oscar-winning performances would have stuck out like a caveman with a laptop - it's a 'play' (and I use the term in its loosest sense) that cannot be taken seriously and anyone doing vocal warm-ups or spotted backstage getting into character would surely have been smothered to a premature death by other cast members.

There were awkward moments, especially the unexpected addition of an embarrassingly worthy Martin Luther King plot-element, which was accompanied by an agonisingly yowled rendition of We Will Overcome, but the audience waited patiently for these aberrations to pass and the deafening screams as Johnny announced that "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," were the distinctive calls of hen parties on a mission. That's not to say we were exempt from such lewd behaviour: the catcalls, whoops and guffaws that emerged from our area were as vigorous and involved as any in the auditorium - and I must admit that our little red plastic binoculars did not remain in their metal holster for long. Now there was fifty pence well spent.