Robert Tanitch reviews Dance ‘Til Dawn at Aldwych Theatre, London WC2
UK champion dancers Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace made a big name for themselves on TV in Strictly Come Dancing and they then went on to do their own stage show, Midnight Tango.
Dance ‘Til Dawn, their latest touring dance showcase, which is in London for ten weeks only, has a vacuous Hollywood gangster plot in which nobody is remotely interested.
The Strictly Come Dancing audience has come strictly for the dancing and director Karen Bruce, and her co-choreographers, Cacace and Simone, wisely, keep the chorus boys and chorus girls moving at a fast pace throughout.
Simone and Cacace are profession ballroom and Latin dancers. They dance. That’s what they do; and they do it with great technical skill. They do not speak. They do not sing and they do not act. There is no characterisation.
They leave the acting and the comedy to Teddy Kempner as spoof narrator and Abbie Osmon as dumb broad. And the singing of standards is left to Oliver Darley and Abbie Osmon.
The show’s high spot is the final tango and it has the audience on its feet. Simone’s and Cacace’s legs criss-cross and interweave at such a phenomenal and dangerous speed that, you fear their shins will be lacerated. The footwork, as always in the tango, is that lethal.
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