It’s slime time as ‘Double Dare Live!’ slides into Ovens Friday

Ovens Auditorium may be one of Charlotte’s nicer venues, but things are about to get messy.

TV host Marc Summers, his live co-host Robin Russo and a gaggle of sugared-up kids will fill the theater Friday night for Nickelodeon Presents: “Double Dare Live,” the kids game show that became famous for its ooey, gooey obstacle courses in the ’80s and ’90s. It returned to the small screen earlier this year with Summers — who has become known to Food Network viewers thanks to shows like “Unwrapped” — in a new role as “Double Dare’s” narrator.

This week, the show goes back out on the road, where audience members will compete in physical challenges, trivia and the ultimate fun run through super sloppy obstacles.

Russo, known as Robin Marella when the show started, still balks at the smell of whip cream, but the worst obstacle she remembers from the original series involved baked beans.

“For one of the obstacles they put beans in this big tub that the kids had to jump into. It was fun for everyone coming in the first day, but after a few days under the lights it was disgusting,” she recalls.

If you watched Nickelodeon in the ’80s and ’90s, “Double Dare” introduced viewers to slime (along with the network’s flagship show “You Can’t Do That on Television”), which became synonymous with the channel. And you can bet the ever-present slime will be part of the live set — as will a crew to clean it up.

“On the actual TV show, there were 10 to 12 men and women in their 20s, and they had squeegees and could squeegee the mess right into a drain,” Russo says. “On the live show, we just take a bunch of towels to clean up.”

Now that she and Summers are in their 50s and 60s, respectively, they can’t really afford to fall through the muck like they used to.

“I can’t tell you how many falls I’ve taken,” she says, yet both hosts will be running through the audience and interacting with crowds during the show like old times.

She’s happy to be back on stage with Summers, who handpicked her to be his on-screen assistant when she was working in production on the original show straight out of college. (“I’d gone to school for sports broadcasting,” she adds.)

“I’ve been his sidekick for so many years. He can throw me a look and I know what he needs,” she says.

The nostalgic reunion also gives Russo’s children a chance to see what mom was doing for a living before they were born. Her daughter, a high school senior who wants to go into entertainment, “was into it from day one,” she says. But her college-age son wasn’t completely sold.

“He was like, ‘This is ridiculous,’” she says of his first time seeing clips at a panel she did. “He didn’t want to pretend he was impressed, but I found out he’d told a couple of his football coaches about me. You still couldn’t pay him a million dollars to do this.”