About This Show
Can a child molester ever really reform himself? This question and more are raised in Fred Crecca’s drama, Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry, in which an ex-convict’s dark past threatens his redemption. Director William Koch’s work has been lauded by The New York Times as “moving, imaginative and excellent.”
Convicted pedophile Ron Griffin has just been released from prison and victimized by vigilantes. In a meeting with his parole officer he is asked to recall his past in order to appeal his high risk level status under Megan’s Law. As he describes a complicated childhood and lonely upbringing with his equally lonely, single mother and sometime prostitute, we witness the torturous step by step evolvement of a sex offender. Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry offers us a surprisingly sympathetic but unsentimental look at the emotional motivations for Ron’s criminality, thereby humanizing him so that we perceive him as less of a monster than might be expected.
In the end Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry asks us to consider society’s responsibility to its people and itself, challenging us to consider our own views of what a life is worth. It’s a story of revulsion, betrayal, neglect, and, in the end, the uncertainty of human behavior, and possible salvation.
