Saturday Night Fever had the audience dancing during it’s opening night at the Wycombe Swan on Tuesday.

Starring Danny Bayne as Tony Manero and Naomi Slights as Stephanie, Saturday Night Fever tells the gritty story of a young man from Brooklyn who lives for the weekend.

It’s 1976 and every Saturday, Tony leaves his dead-end job at a paint shop behind, dons his flares and hits the dance floor in Odyssey disco club, wowing the crowds with his phenomenal dance moves.

When Tony meets the glamorous dancer Stephanie, his life changes forever. After ditching his usual dance partner, Annette, in favour of Stephanie, they start training for a dance competition that could get them both out of Brooklyn for good.

Saturday Night Fever is unlike any musical that I have ever seen before. At first glance, you might think this musical is all about dancing, but in reality, it was gritty and realistic – definitely not your usual, light-hearted, cheesy musical.

The show deals with serious issues; rape, abortion, death, violence and racial tensions, but there is some humour dotted in between and the classic disco tunes that everyone loves to keep the audience’s spirits high.

Danny Bayne is an excellent actor, portraying the misery Tony feels in his everyday life brilliantly – he relished the challenge of taking on such a unique character and he nailed it perfectly.

The club singer, played by CiCi Howells, has a beautiful and powerful voice, by far the best singer in the entire production. The whole cast sung well, but some of them didn’t have such strong voices, including Annette, played by Bethany Linsdell, but listening to her sing was still enjoyable nonetheless.

The Brooklyn accents were mostly very believable, with only a couple of slips here and there that gave it away.

The set and lighting designers deserve a huge pat on the back for making it as realistic as possible for a stage show. The set design was, in a word, incredible. It’s not often that background sets are very convincing, usually sending your imagination into overdrive to try and guess what a scene might actually look like, but the director and crew have done an amazing job on this one.

I was completely in awe of the use of lighting and projection to create scenes like the Brooklyn Bridge, a Manhattan apartment and an underground train.

The contrast between the miserable reality of Tony’s dead-end job in a paint shop and his tense family life with the joy of the Odyssey disco club was also obvious with the use of lighting – the spectacular, glittering colours in the club compared with the darkness of his outside life really hit it home.

The dancing was fantastic and the routines were really well choreographed to match the upbeat disco tunes that everyone who goes along to the show is looking forward to. Of course, it wouldn’t be Saturday Night Fever without the legendary finger pointing and hip thrusting and the show didn’t disappoint.

Some of the songs were re-worked to suit the despair and misery of Tony’s life outside the disco. Jive Talkin’ was transformed into an angry protest by Tony and his friends and How Deep is your Love is turned into a poignant duet at the end.

Some people may not have been happy with the changes, but I personally felt it was a nice addition; the story really isn’t a happy one most of the time, so it is unrealistic to be singing upbeat disco songs during the gloomy scenes.

Translating Saturday Night Fever from film to stage was a risky move for director Ryan McBryde, who was keen to include the “raw and dark” scenes that were edited out of the film for being too racy.

Personally, I think the risk paid off. The story was very well done, with excellent actors and singers dealing with the sometimes difficult-to-watch scenes with complete professionalism.

There is a warning on the Wycombe Swan website, but the story does contain strong language as well as the adult themes, so it’s not really suitable for young children.

Overall, if you want to see a gritty musical with a really interesting storyline as well as the usual dancing and singing, then Saturday Night Fever is the perfect balance.

Saturday Night Fever is showing until Saturday, January 24. For tickets and show times, visit www.wycombeswan.co.uk.