Annalese Starzec and Blake Zelesnikar Photo by Matthew Murphy

Sure, there are going to be a few stops on the way. We'll meet the Baby and Houseman family and Kellerman, the owner, and his dorky brat son at their resort somewhere in what is almost certainly the Catskills. Yeah, ok, great.

Then Johnny, Penny, and the wildly talented hotel staff will do some "dirty dancing" in a cabin hidden somewhere away from the prying eyes of the guests. Yes, please.

Then Baby will offer to perform with Johnny and fall repeatedly in the lake while learning an important lesson about balance in an extended dance practice sequence during which we'll be introduced to, but never see Baby and Johnny pull off "The Lift." Ahhh, good, good.

Then the love story will heat up with a late-night cabin dance to Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me," followed by an adorable "Love Is Strange" lip-sync: Baby, oh baby, my sweet baby, you're the one!

And we'll get a quick lesson about class hierarchy and the worker/owner dichotomy in upstate New York resort life. Not what we came for, but important, nonetheless.

Then "Nobody puts Baby in the corner!" and we clap along together and sing a little about having the time of our lives. Almost there!

And then Baby takes a deep breath and gathers up her courage and begins her run to Johnny, and... "The Lift"!

That's what we want. That's what we came to see.

So is that what Dirty Dancing: The Musical gives us? Well, kinda.

Dirty Dancing: The Musical, now on stage in its national tour at the James M. Nederlander Theatre, is not a great musical. It's not even a good musical. But that's not the point. The point is, Dirty Dancing is a fun musical. Mostly, though, I do have questions. But first, here's what the show gets right. Some strong vocal performances, good dancing, and the production just looks fantastic.

Speaking of looks, Annalese Starzec looks a lot like Jennifer Grey in her role as Frances "Baby" Houseman. I mean, she looks a lot like Jennifer Grey. It's uncanny. And she moves a lot like Jennifer Grey. If the goal is to tap into our nostalgia and get us excited to relive the movie, nothing moves us further in that direction than Starzec's performance. And while we're at it, Blake Zelesnikar goes a long way toward doing his best Patrick Swayze as dance instructor Johnny Castle. The two didn't have much chemistry on opening night, but there's plenty of potential there. And Olivia Cece is wonderful in her near show-stealing, superb dance performance as Penny Johnson.

To complement Starzec and Zelesnikar's dance storyline, Ethan Peterson, who plays Billy Kellerman, the owner's son, and Ashley Lalonde, who plays Elizabeth, Billy's love interest, provide the bulk of the singing in the musical. In an effort to bring more to the story, the new production now features a bigger and more multi-dimensional role for Billy: less brat, more searching. Both Peterson and Lalonde showcase their strong voices and carry the show through new moments designed to bring depth, like the Civil Rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome," while covering classic Dirty Dancing fan favorites like "Hungry Eyes." And together, they duet on "The Time of My Life," the musical and movie's greatest hit and the finale. But while both Peterson and Lalonde are clearly gifted performers, the music is sparse and thin, and at points frankly confusing.

In a show that relies heavily on movement, Lonny Price's direction and Darrell Grand Moultrie's choreography call on the source material with a few new takes to try to capture the feeling of Swayze and Grey's dance odyssey. But as the musical flies through truncated versions of songs from the 1960s and the original movie, the show begins to take on the quality of "previously on Dirty Dancing," as though we're getting the moments we came for while hurrying through the new story at the same time.

Long story short, there were some great moments, but I still have questions.

Here's a big one. If this is a musical, why isn't there more, um, singing? Dirty Dancing has some iconic lines. I mean, who doesn't love "Nobody puts Baby in the corner"? But the movie wasn't known for its amazing dialogue. In a show filled with so much great music, why do only two people do almost all of the singing?

And here's another. Do we really need all the new subplots? The 2026 version has so much, well, extra. At one point in the first act, the story is juggling the issue of class inequality, the dangers of an illegal abortion, the promise and perils of the Civil Rights movement, and the ongoing threat of nuclear annihilation highlighted by the Cuban Missile Crisis, while moving along with the love story. Still, this greatest hits of the challenges of the 1960s and today may have served the story had so much of it not been essentially forgotten by the end of the second act.

At heart, Dirty Dancing is a simple story. Poor hunky dance boy meets pretty rich girl who can also dance but just doesn't know it yet. The father of the rich girl doesn't like the poor hunky dance boy, but comes around when he learns the truth about the boy and sees his daughter happy and dancing. Then... "The Lift"!

Of the original 1987 film, Roger Ebert wrote, "Well, you gotta hand it to Dirty Dancing for one thing at least: It's got a great title. The title and the ads seem to promise a guided tour into the anarchic practices of untrammeled teenage lust, but the movie turns out to be a tired and relentlessly predictable story of love between kids from different backgrounds."

And yet, we love this story. We love it so much we show up nearly forty years later to see it on stage.

And herein lies the challenge for Dirty Dancing: The Musical, the catch-22: It wants to be more, but it just doesn't get there. Still, it's OK. We really just came for the fun. We came for the memories, the nostalgia, the "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," "The Lift."

And mostly, we had fun. So I recommend it, despite myself.

Dirty Dancing: The Musical runs through September 20, at the Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.broadwayinchicago.com. For information on the tour, visit www.ddmusical.com.