Nancy Savoca’s film, starring River Phoenix and Lily Taylor, released in 1991, was critically and commercially unsuccessful. Dogfight has now been turned into an Off-Broadway musical by Peter Buchan with music and lyrics by Ben J Pasek and Justin Paul. The story is set in 1963. On their last night in San Francisco, before they are dispatched to the war in Vietnam, three 18-year-old macho marines decide to have a good time.
The boys, cruel, heartless creeps, also decide to participate in a long-held marine tradition, in which you bet $50 to see who can come up with the ugliest date. I haven’t seen anything quite as nasty since Neil LaBute’s 1997 film, In the Company of Men. Lots of people are going to feel very uncomfortable, despite the fact that the naive and sensitive waitress (Laura Jane Matthewson) comes out on top and tells the boys (to a round of applause from the Southwark audience) in no uncertain terms exactly what she thinks of them. Everybody will like the scene in a posh restaurant when she gives the marine (Jamie Muscato) a lesson in good manners, parodying the vulgar way he talks. She orders a meal, swearing like a trooper.
You would never guess from the confident way Matthewson holds the stage and the way she sings and particularly the way she sings her solo, “Pretty Funny,” that this is her professional London debut. Muscato is also impressive in his solo, “Come Back”. The major flaw of Matt Ryan’s production is that the lyrics are not always audible.