The Duke of Wellington once said of his soldiers 'I don’t know what they do to the enemy, but they sure as hell frighten me'. If he’d ever met the US Marines featured in Dogfight, he’d have gone full Charles Lee and soiled himself.
This 2014 musical, based on the 90s film starring River Phoenix, features music by Pasek and Paul who are a genuine hit factory of a duo famous for their work on La La Land, The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen as well as more niche work such as their song cycle Edges. It tells the story of a group of Jarheads on their last night before deployment to Vietnam, who take part in a 'dogfight' - a competition as to who can pull the ugliest girl. This is staged by the student company of Pembroke College this week in their Pichette Auditorium.
Despite the evident popularity of Dogfight through successful Off-Broadway and Off-West End productions, I found the writing massively flawed. None of the songs have anything like the robust and unbreakable melody of 'City of Stars' or full anthemic passion of 'From Now On'. This would not be so much of a problem if the morality of the narrative hadn’t left me so cross.
The story mainly centres around Birdlace (a truly reprehensible, aggressive, possessive mansplainer) who convinces Rose (a shy waitress with a passion for songwriting) to join him on the marine’s night out. Liam Sargeant and Eilidh Ross give laudable performances in both vocal and character work in order to give the poor writing some traction. Rose learns of the 'dogfight' through Marcie, a prostitute that one of the marines has paid to come along in order to win the competition. Lorelei Piper brings Marcie to life in a standout sassy performance with beautiful vocals (supported by Ross) on the show’s title song. Upon hearing this news, Rose understandably slaps Birdlace and screams 'I hope there is a war and you all die!'. Quite frankly I agreed with her. The marines are portrayed as nasty, leery Neanderthals for who make the contestants of MTV’s Ex On The Beach look practically progressive.
Directors Hazel Ellender and Molly Goldstone say in their programme notes that the marine characters are 'senseless and uneducated rather than heartless'. Whilst I understand this argument, I saw no humanity from those characters at any point. Hazel and Molly (or HAZMO as they sign themselves as in the programme) have certainly mounted an ambitious production which utilises the space well through a beautiful backdrop and a very tight live band. There is also a breath-taking war sequence featuring a strobe light and an incredible soundscape. Their limited budget gets the better of them sometimes (there is a scene in a tattoo parlour in which the tattoo machine is inadequately replaced by a sharpie pen), but still their enterprising nature is to be applauded.
The cast got a rapturous applause in their curtain call and the audience left clearly energised and captivated by what they had seen. This certainly is proof that there are many interesting and daring student productions happening in Oxford and all should be supported.